Commonly Asked Online Marketing Questions by Small Businesses’

Online marketing can be tricky to navigate. As a business owner, your passion is your business and your clients. Worrying about online marketing shouldn’t be clouding your mind. But as you manage all aspects of your business yourself, you run into a whole technical new world. As you begin to plan to market your business, you might run into some of the commonly asked online marketing questions by business owners. We’re here to help make online marketing simple and answer some of the questions we’re asked everyday:

Creating your business online brand is the best place to start. This includes your logo, color scheme, personality, and more. Defining your brand is the jumping point to all categories of online marketing –including: advertising, directory listing, websites, social media, and more. We recommend you:

 1.  Select a domain name

 2.  Design your logo

 3.  Design your website

 4.  Place yourself on directories

 5.  Work on your SEO

 6.  Build out your social media profiles

 7.  Track and monitor your analytics over a3-6-month period

 8.  Advertise based on analytic metrics (Adwords, Facebook, E-Blasts, Print, and more)

We suggest having a graphic designer create your business logo. A (cheap) logo can cost as low as $50. Logos have a very long shelf life– once your logo is designed, you won’t have to update it for at least 3-5years. Think of how often some of the big brands redesign their logos. You may just need to enhance it to stay current with trends.

Different colors play on different emotions and can evoke different memories in people. Take a look at our post on Tips and Tricks forCreating a Stunning Logo. In this post we shared the various emotions evoked by color and how to utilize them in your business.

Your website should be your business’ first leap into the online world. This is also going to be the most time-consuming step. Creating the perfect website is crucial to converting users into clients. If you want someone to come into your office, you need to wow them with a user-friendly website first.

What aspects should I focus on when creating my website?

Creating excellent content is first priority when creating your website. When people go to search engines to find a business, they are typically looking for a solution to a problem. By writing content that is:

 ·  User focused

 ·  Problem solving

 ·  Keyword enhanced

You are able to have more of the right users visit your website.

While the look and feel of your website is important, the content (graphics and information) on your website is more important. Going with a simple and basic theme on your website can help users focus more on your content rather than how the page looks. More so, if your business isn’t in a tech focused industry, you shouldn’t worry about having the latest animations and features as your users won’t either.

Important information:

 ·  Services offered

 ·  Location

 ·  Contact information

Secondary information:

 ·  Service description

 ·  Qualifications

 ·  Biography

 ·  Values & Mission

 ·  Staff

 ·  History

Write your content for humans, not search engines. All content on your website should be easily read by online searchers. This means not over including keywords just to boost your websites SEO. You can include keywords throughout your content by keeping it relevant.

The most effective keywords for business are actually longtail keywords and phrases. They look something like this:

‘pediatric dentist for chipped front tooth in Toronto’

Rather than

‘emergency dentist’

As we previously mentioned, online searchers are looking for solutions to their problems. When we search for a solution, we usually need a specific one – like fixing your child hockey stars chipped tooth.

Think of common problems that your clients have and problems that you are equipped to handle, and include them in your content. You can also discover new keywords by searching online. However, the best keywords will be included as you naturally write your content.

To learn more about keywords and writing content, check out our post 7 Easy Tips to Edit Your Websites Content - What You CAN and CAN’T Say as a Business Owner.

How do I know if my website is ranking high on Google?

Try searching a keyword or phrase in Google – where does your business rank? You can also check your websites analytics to see where your clicks are coming from. If the majority are from Google or another search engine, chances are your business is top ranked in a particular category.

Michael: By wanting it more. By working hard-
Nana: What's your mission statement

Michael: Mmmm-My mission is stated as follows: I will not be beat.I will never give up. I am on a mission. That is the Michael Scott guarantee.

By focusing on your SEO strategy, you can outrank your competitors on search engines. Regularly updating your content to stay relevant based on the time of and the advances in your industry.

By only sharing relevant and accurate content on your website. Clicks usually turn into bounces when:

a user can’t find the information they set out to find

OR

the information presented is incorrect

A website will convert your users into clients when searchers are able to find a solution to their problem. You can encourage this by regularly editing your content to stay up to date and include new and exciting information.

How often should I update my website?

Every 2-3 months you should update your website. You can make small changes like:

·Changing font styles

·Editing/swapping keywords and phrases

·Changing titles

·Editing colors

·Updating photos and graphics

·Double checking contact information

We understand that you might not have much free time in your busy calendar. We suggest scheduling in 3-4 hours weekly to plan, edit, engage and manage your business’ online marketing tasks. Offline would be another 2-3hours a week.

Having a team dedicated to marketing is the best way to help your business to grow. We understand it isn’t always an option for most small businesses. Hiring an outside professional team to manage your online marketing is becoming a more popular option. At Dr. Marketing, we take over as your marketing department. We take the stress and confusion of marketing and make it simple –so you can get back to doing what you do best. Trust Dr. Marketing with your dental marketing, legal marketing, accounting marketing, and professional practice marketing for both online and offline.

One of the best ways to save time on marketing is by creating an editorial or content calendar. By preplanning online marketing goals and tasks, you’re able to spend less time navigating and figuring out what you should be doing – and spend more time actually doing it. Creating the calendar might be a bit tedious, but once it’s created you can hand off tasks to other members of your team to also help you out.

Yes, you should allot time on your content calendar to be active on social media. This can include creating/writing posts, posting content, responding to comments/messages, creating ads, and more. Since 1 in 3people use social media, you are able to reach over one third of your target demographics just by showing up on social media.

There are a few major social media platforms that mostpeople use:

 ·  Facebook

 ·  Instagram

 ·  Linkedin

 ·  Twitter

And a few others that are used as well:

 ·  Pinterest

 ·  SnapChat

 ·  TikTok

The right social media platform for your business depends on the type of clients you are looking to reach. By defining your target audience,you are able to better understand where and how your business can interact with them.

You shouldn’t try to be on every social media platform as a business. There simply won’t be as much ROI on some as there is for others.

We typically recommend getting started on Facebook as it is used by over 2.7 billion users worldwide. It is also one of the easiest platforms to get started on as well. You can share a variety of content, spend your marketing budget (if you have one) on reaching more people, and also learn more about social media marketing. In addition, Facebook also has a business listing tool (much like Google Business) where users are able to search for a business and see your page as a directory listing.

All information we share was written from the back of our hand – we know just about everything when it comes to marketing for dentists, lawyers, and accountants! Have some more questions? Leave a comment below for our next post!

We’re here to make online marketing simple! Contact us with any questions by clicking the call button below!