What every business should know about digital marketing

Planted 02020-05-29

SEO, PPC, Brand, What do you need?

Search engine optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is doing things to rank high in the search results for a generic term.

There’s a misconception that SEO is for ranking higher. Someone is going to make generic hits. It’s a hard pill to swallow but it’s probably not going to be you. For the rest of us, there’s the path of connection, empathy, and change.

Your goal isn’t to be found when someone types in a generic term.

Your goal is to have a few people care enough about you and what you do that they’ll type in your name. A few people who care enough to write about you. Who care enough to look for you instead of a generic alternative.

SEO is for making the most of people searching for you.

Pay-per-click advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) is a form of direct marketing advertising. It leads directly to sales. It’s action-oriented and if you’re not measuring everything don’t run them. You need to measure and assign values to each step of the process:

1. The goal of an ad is to get a click.
2. The goal of the click is to make a sale or earn permission.
3. The goal of the sale is to lead to another sale or word of mouth.
4. The goal of permission is to teach and lead to a sale.

Make sure you’re targeting the right people. Make sure what makes them click aligns with what they get. Reinforce their dreams, justify their fears, and soften their failures. Give those who successfully engaged a tool to tell the others.

Brand marketing

You can’t measure brand marketing. But it matters. Every time someone interacts or sees any of you, they guess about the rest of you.

Everything you do markets your brand.

With brand ads you have to be consistent and patient. Instead of measuring, you have to engage with the culture. If you can’t do that, don’t do brand ads.

What your business needs

Two things every business needs to have:

1. Something worth making.
2. A story worth telling.

When you have those, a few people will benefit and care about what you do. You need to tell a story that matches the internal narrative of that group and get them to spread the word.

Something that is exactly what a few people have been waiting for. (A few people because we’re all waiting for something different.) Something this small group of people will care enough about to make it happen.

To make them care you need to deliver messages they want to hear, messages they’re waiting to hear. You need to invest in them. Gain empathy for them. Understand the stories they tell others, and themselves—their internal narratives. Everyone always acts according to their internal narratives.

Good stories:

1. Connect us to our purpose and vision for our career or business.
2. Allow us to celebrate our strengths by remembering how we got from there to here.
3. Deepen our understanding of our unique value and what differentiates us.
4. Reinforce our core values.
5. Help us to act in alignment and make value-based decisions.
6. Encourage us to respond to customers instead of reacting to the marketplace.
7. Attract customers who want to support businesses that reflect or represent their values.
8. Build brand loyalty and give customers a story to tell.
9. Attract the kind of like-minded employees we want.
10. Help us stay motivated and continue to do work we’re proud of.

Understand what they want and need. Then state how your story and your promise will interact with these wants and desires. What change are you seeking to make? How will it change their status?

You have to write, you have to tell people, and you have to do so in a way that they will take notice.

Why do people choose you? And more importantly, why don’t people choose you and why are they right?