What is SEO and how it works?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving and increasing web traffic to your website or web page from search engines. Essentially, SEO is about understanding what your customers are searching for and the content they find engaging. Knowing the answers or at least working to get them lets you connect more, convert more, and expose your brand further.

10 ways how SEO helps your business with client acquisition

These are all proven ways how SEO helps your business to attract new clients and retain the old ones.

SEO makes your business more visible

It allows you to get to know your customers

It also allows customers to get to know you better

SEO reveals new opportunities

SEO is trackable and adjustable

As mentioned earlier, SEO  gives you a lot of information about your customers. Now what do you do with it?

One of SEO’s main benefits is noticing what works and what doesn’t. While it can take time for search engines to crawl a site, you can determine what moves the needle.

If a new landing page with persuasive copy and clear CTAs yielded higher conversions and you saw a jump in rankings, this may be something to repeat. On the other hand, if you implemented a dubious link building campaign in the past, you’ll see little to no impact. Fortunately, you can always switch gears and gain link equity from more reliable sources.

Local relevance equals convenience

You’ll hear a lot about locally relevant content in the SEO world. This refers to developing content and using SEO tactics to answer local customers’ queries and direct them to your website when they are looking for what you offer.

Put simply, if someone searches for “the best cupcakes in Columbus, Ohio” you want your cupcake shop to rank and showcase what makes your treats better. There are various SEO practices that can help, but doing it correctly shows customers what they want, where they can find you, and goes a long way to increasing revenue.

It makes websites better and easier to use

Search engines like Google are constantly updating their algorithms with the user or better yet, your potential customers’ experience in mind. They want to deliver the best website to meet their needs with the best UX. That’s why it is important to revisit and fine-tune your approach.

With more searches than ever happening on phones, tablets, and voice search platforms, is your site still suited for someone using a desktop? Large walls of text, out-of-frame images, and obsolete website architecture all contribute to a less than optimal experience and diminished rankings.

Think of it this way, if your site looks dated, is hard to navigate, and feels stagnant, how do you expect to engage a potential client?

An SEO investment is for long-term gains

It brings your whole marketing plan together

SEO is a great way to build brand awareness and should be the driving force behind your marketing efforts. All of your campaigns, whether they focus on e-mail, social media, e-commerce, or more traditional avenues like print should all borrow from and support one another.

This ensures your business has a unified brand voice, but it also adds authority. When your social media posts integrate with your blog and landing pages, your goals are aligned, your followers and engagement increase, and you’re better placed for organic growth.

SEO is cost-effective with a high ROI

Conclusion

Devoting resources to SEO is an undertaking for most businesses, and it definitely takes time and expertise. Some may be hesitant, favoring more immediate ways to increase web traffic and revenue. But this is often shortsighted.In the end, SEO is worth it because you better believe that your competition takes SEO seriously. The companies on page one are looking to make their sites faster, more user friendly, and engaging for their customers. There is nothing stopping your business from doing the same. SEO is how new and innovative enterprises level the playing field, and prove to the consumer why they deserve their business and the top spot in search.

Using audience data for developing relationships with customers

Customer experience has become important when it comes to enabling business success and meeting sales targets. Research shows that nearly two-thirds of companies now compete based on their customer experience alone. In 2010, this number was just 36%. But what do big data and big data companies have to do with customer experience?

They hold the key to creating better, more targeted, and personalized messages that can help you convert leads to loyal customers. Moreover, nearly 74% of consumers say that they are somewhat likely, at the very least, to make purchases based on their customer experience alone.

To develop better customer experiences, you’ll need to understand their pain points, as well as what they are looking for from you and this is where audience data comes in handy.

The three kinds of audience data you can collect

There are three main kinds of data you can collect from your consumers. These include:

Big picture data

Big picture data is related to your target demographic, information about current trends, as well as what consumers are interested in. This type of audience data enables you to create projections regarding what the audience wants. You can then create a marketing campaign tailoring your findings to help your campaign resonate more with your audience.

Transactional data

This includes data related to any and all purchases made by a consumer. You can specifically track the products and services they are buying, as well as the number of times they are making that purchase. You can track a consumer’s buying habits, including how often they shop from you and what they usually look for. This can help you tailor recommendations to them or send them coupons and offers.

Granular data

This is the kind of data that is limited to a person and their buying attitudes and behaviors. You can collect such data from mobile apps, loyalty programs, and more. Granular is used to create tailored, personalized messages that can enable a consumer to feel special. Moreover, you have access to all the insight and information related to consumer behavior, as well as their buying patterns. This can enable you to improve your marketing campaigns.

Five ways you can use audience data to build relationships with consumers

By building relationships with your consumers, you’ll be able to create a loyal group of consumers, who you can expect to make regular purchases. Here is how you can go about building relationships with your customers with the help of audience data:

Personalize customer experiences

With the help of personal granular data, you can better tailor customer experiences catered to each customer. This can enable you to build strong relationships with your customers and provide them with experiences that make them want to make purchases. You’ll be able to refine your messaging to create targeted ads that make consumers want to buy your products or services.

Targeted promotions

Using audience data, you can keep track of everything that a consumer is buying from you. This will allow you to recommend items that are similar to what they normally buy, increasing their chances of purchasing them. You can also send coupons and offers pertinent to what the consumer regularly buys to get them to make a purchase. This is in contrast to sending random offers and coupons, which may or may not be items the consumer is interested in.

Provide useful and relevant content

Consider providing content that the consumer is likely to provide useful, as well. If you notice through your customer surveys, or social listening, that customers need help regarding a certain product, create an article or blog post about it. This can enable your audience to feel heard and help you provide information that can lead to them using your products or services better.

More importantly, the consumer will feel heard, and this can improve customer loyalty as well.

Providing products and services based on what consumers want

With the help of customer surveys, and in general, following what consumers are saying on social media, you can find out about products or services that they are interested in. Using this information, you can then provide them with products or services that they’ve been asking for. This provides you with information on products or services that will sell well and gives the consumers what they want as well.

Building customer experience

Conclusion

Audience data can be useful when it comes to building relationships with your consumers. By using the audience data you’ve collected, you can tailor personalized messages and optimize your marketing campaigns. You’ll be able to retain your customers better and develop loyalty among them as well.

9 most (un)expected costs of doing business

In order to avoid any financial surprise, we’ve asked business owners who already went down that road to share the cost of doing business they wish they knew earlier.

Inefficient employees

Omid Torkian, CEO at Shipbots

Having a website

Andre Kazimierski, CEO of Improovy

Taxes

Jamie Hickey, Founder of Coffee Semantics

Regulatory and insurance costs

Devon Fata, CEO at Pixoul

Small business loans

Carter Seuthe, CEO at Credit Summit

Marketing

I calculated my cost of doing business by determining what I would be willing to spend out of pocket before establishing a steady revenue stream. I would advise new business owners to be aware of marketing expenses.

Marketing can include social media advertising, website creation, graphic design platforms, and even apparel. Individually, each is not very expensive. However, when you use multiple advertising sources, the costs can add up and not provide the desired results, income generation. Therefore calculating these costs upfront and making sure you get the most out of the advertising budget is imperative.

Annette Harris, Founder of Harris Financial Coaching

Hiring and training employees

Michael Moran, Owner of Green Lion Search Group

Equipment failure

Navarre Trousselot, CEO at Navexa

License costs

Ian B., President of Kredmo

Conclusion

Don’t start your business before you make sure you analyzed all your costs. Determine what costs are possible to minimize, which costs are a must and which are potential costs that can harm your workflow. Being a good boss means being prepared to respond accordingly to every scenario. Therefore, the priceless but biggest cost of doing business is taking risks and always being awake to predict potential problems before they lead to a disaster.

Companies need to understand both sides of data

When it comes to data, it’s not a matter of choosing structured vs. unstructured data. Both are necessary for the success of your company. They’re not two disparate concepts but, rather, different sides of the same coin.

Organized data that seamlessly integrates with your relational databases helps you access and analyze essential information and gather valuable business intelligence. It gives you clear and concise quantitative information that you can understand at a glance.

Without structured data, you wouldn’t be able to perform accurate financial analysis, measure your KPIs, or even use simple services such as online booking.

On the other hand, unstructured data expands your data pool and offers you qualitative information. It’s necessary for predictive analytics, data mining, and even the creation of AI-driven chatbots.

Examples of unstructured data

– Text Files : Emails, survey results, customer reviews, chatbot interactions;
– Image and video files: Video testimonials, product images, employee presentations;
– Audio files: Voice mails, customer service calls, sales calls;
– Social media data: Comments, hashtags, mentions, group posts;
– Webpage data: Blogs, updates, reviews;
– Public data: Press releases, marketing materials, job ads;
– ESG data: Sustainability reports and predictions, case studies, social responsibility policies.

It’s the versatility of unstructured data that makes it so difficult to manage. You’ll need a powerful AI solution to go through the information, extract valuable insights, and receive a relevant and accurate analysis.

Almost 80% of enterprise data is unstructured

It’s estimated that by 2025, over 80% of all available data will be unstructured, making it clear just how essential it is to start gathering and analyzing it as soon as possible.

Unstructured data contains vital information regarding your brand’s performance, your competitors, the market trends, and the overall customer sentiment. Neglecting unstructured data will only deprive you of valuable insights that can help you make better data-driven business decisions.

Better insights

Although it’s unorganized and difficult to access, unstructured data offers much more detailed insights than structured data ever could.

Whereas structured data can tell you that your customers are buying a specific product or spending most of their time on a specific page on your site, for example, unstructured data can tell you why. You’ll gain deeper insights into their purchasing habits, ways of thinking, personal preferences, likes, wants, and needs.

You’ll receive comprehensive answers to any question you have – who are your customers, what goals are your competitors achieving, which businesses are your industry’s leaders, and why?

New innovation opportunities

Better insights can’t but lead to greater innovation opportunities. When you have the full picture of what your clients want, their pain points, what you’re doing well, and what you can improve on, you’ll find it easier to meet and exceed customer expectations.

Moreover, you’ll get the opportunity to identify any potential market gaps and fill them with unique products or services.

Improved customer experience

Your structured data will give you the facts about your demographics – the age of your target audiences, their location, even their income brackets. However, it’s the unstructured data that will tell you how you can improve the customer experience.

By gathering social media data, examining the comments and reviews you receive, looking into your customer support tickets, you’ll learn straight from the source about what your customers expect from you. Then, you can work on exceeding those expectations.

Conclusion