In the crowded digital marketplace, standing out is challenging. Enter AI-powered marketing, a revolutionary upgrade transforming brands into digital powerhouses.

Hyper-Personalized Campaigns: Beyond Basic Personalization

Gone are the days of generic marketing. Today’s gold standard is AI-driven hyper-personalization. This approach uses customer data analysis to create deeply resonant, individualized marketing campaigns. With AI’s ability to segment audiences based on intricate criteria, including purchasing history and browsing behavior, your messages can hit the mark every time.

Enhanced Customer Journey Mapping

AI’s capabilities extend to mapping the entire customer journey. By predicting needs and preferences at each stage, AI aids in crafting narratives that guide customers from discovery to purchase, integrating your brand into their personal stories.

SEO Wizardry: Mastering Search Engine Dynamics

With ever-changing algorithms, SEO is a complex puzzle. AI serves as a sophisticated navigator, deciphering these changes through machine learning. It aids in keyword optimization, understanding search intent, and aligning content with search trends.

Predictive SEO

AI tools offer predictive SEO, anticipating search engine and user behavior changes. This proactive stance ensures your brand’s prominent visibility in search results, capturing the right audience at the right time.

Social Media Mastery: Crafting a Digital Narrative

AI transforms social media strategies from uncertain to precise. By analyzing vast social data, AI provides insights into resonating content.

Content Optimization

AI analyzes performance data to recommend effective content types. This data-driven approach refines your social media content strategy.

Engagement Analysis

AI examines user interaction nuances, understanding engagement patterns. It helps tailor interactions for maximum impact, including adjusting posting schedules and messaging for increased relevance.

Conclusion: Navigating the AI-Driven Marketing Landscape

AI-powered marketing is essential for thriving in the digital age, offering precision and personalization beyond traditional methods. For small businesses, it’s a chance to leverage AI for impactful, data-driven strategies.

As we embrace the AI revolution, the future of marketing is not just bright but intelligently radiant. With AI as your digital ally, your brand is equipped for a successful journey, making every marketing effort and customer interaction count.

What are the key drip campaign best practices? To help you best conduct your drip campaigns effectively, we asked marketing professionals and business leaders this question for their best advice.

From segmenting your target audience to sending emails that add value to the recipient, there are several pieces of advice that should serve as your best practices for conducting successful drip campaigns that bring in more leads.

Drip campaign best practices

Here are 14 drip campaign best practices these leaders follow to increase leads:

1. Segment your target audience
2. Personalize your message and include a clear call to action (CTA)
3. Make use of the yes ladder
4. Send birthday and anniversary emails
5. Keep drip emails short and to the point
6. Test different lengths of time for each message
7. Use an appropriate drip software according to your needs
8. Resend emails to non-openers with a new subject line
9. Determine triggers accurately
10. Stay consistent
11. Time your emails right and make them engaging
12. Know your audience and speak to their experience
13. Write each email short and concise with a clear message
14. Send emails that add value to the recipient

Segment your target audience

You want to personalize your email marketing as much as possible. The best way to do this is in the intake form on your website or a landing page. Ask two or three qualifying questions that will help segment your list.

Don’t ask more than three questions.

Keep it simple. For instance, a business that sells online parenting classes offers a free webinar. In their intake form, they ask how many kids they have and their ages. Obviously, parenting classes for kids under 9 will be different from those for tweens and teens.

Therefore, you can market the right class to a parent and have a better chance of getting a positive response. So, think about your target audiences and how you can segment your list so it makes sense to them. Then you can walk them through their buying journey with an effective drip campaign.

Giselle Aguiar, AZ Social Media Wiz

Personalize your message and include a clear CTA

One of the most important drip campaign best practices is to make sure your campaign has a clear call to action. If people aren’t sure what you want them to do after opening your email, they are likely to not do anything.

This can really hurt the effectiveness of your campaign, so you want to avoid this at all costs. You also want to make sure your drip campaigns are personalized as much as possible. This means using the recipient’s first name and making sure the content is targeted specifically for them.

This will increase opens and click-through rates, which will help improve the overall effectiveness of your campaign.

Curran Van Waarde, CallScaler

Make use of the yes ladder

When using drip campaigns to get a user to take actions like booking a demo, making a purchase, or converting from free to paid, one tactic that can help improve conversions is to make use of the “yes ladder.”

What you’re looking to do is to get your prospect to say “yes” to your end goal/big ask by getting them to say “yes” to much smaller, trivial asks that you’re confident your prospect will say “yes” to. With each “yes” your prospect responds with, the more likely they are to say “yes” when it comes to the big ask.

Essentially, you need to identify your end goal – this is the top of your ladder (and subsequently the last email in your drip sequence).

You then want to work backwards, with each email in your drip campaign having the purpose of building the rungs to your ladder. This is done by making sure there’s some type of ask that will get your prospect to say “yes” to. Because forward inertia is key, it’s critical that you get your first “yes” in your initial drip email.

Josh Brown, Helpjuice

Send birthday and anniversary emails

I found anniversary and birthday emails are some of the best ways when it comes to drip campaign best practices. As they let buyers know that we care for them. Also as per the statistics, birthday emails have a 481% higher transaction rate and 179% higher unique click rates than promotional emails.

I always recommend adding an extra field on your sign-up forms as it helps you acquire this information. Sending birthday or anniversary emails with appealing texts along with a small discount as a present/gift for the next purchase always leaves clients happy and suffice.

Hima Pujara, BugRaptors

Keep drip emails short and to the point

This might be an unpopular viewpoint, but my drip campaign emails are very short.  And the emails look as if they are coming from my personal account.

I treat every email as if I’m writing to a friend (often I am) and I tell them what I’m sending, why I think they will appreciate it and provide a link.

I’ve been following this format for the last year and have seen an increase in click rates from as low as 1% to as high as 5%.

Ivana Taylor, DIYMarketers

Test different lengths of time for each message

One of the more strategic drip campaign best practices is to test different lengths of time for each message. You might find that your subscribers respond better to messages that are sent more frequently, or that they prefer a longer gap between each message.

When you’re testing, be sure to include a control group – a group of subscribers who receive the same number of emails as your test groups, but at regular intervals.

When you’re testing your drip campaign, don’t forget that there are many factors that could affect the results. For example, if your product has been featured in the media recently, it may get more clicks than usual. If one particular person in your company is more active on social media than others, they may be included in every test group and skew the results towards one outcome or another. Make sure you account for these factors when analyzing your results!

Benjamin Basic, Fast Food Menu Prices

Use an appropriate drip software according to your needs

Welcome aboard if you’ve chosen the drip campaign tool you’re going to use if you’re reading this. However, if you are weighing your alternatives, you should choose the one that has all the characteristics you require for your campaigns.

A good email automation tool should offer a number of essential capabilities so that you can build up your email sequence properly. While email customization tools enable you to adjust your emails in accordance with various data, list segmentation makes it simpler to target various demographic groups within your target audience. Setting up a drip campaign involves many different steps, including determining the best time to send emails based on the campaign plan.

Michael Garrico, Total Shape

Resend emails to non-openers with a new subject line

For most drip campaigns, less than half of your recipients open your emails, meaning the majority of your target audience never sees the content in the email itself. Consider re-sending emails to people who didn’t open the first time with a new subject line.

Not only does this increase the overall number of people who see your email content, you’ll also learn what types of subject lines are more likely to result in opens.

Peter Zawistowicz, Pace

Determine triggers accurately

Determining triggers accurately can help implement a successful drip campaign. Triggers serve as a signal for automated emails to start. For instance, ecommerce businesses, like home appliance online stores, utilize abandoned cart emails.

Sending automated abandoned cart emails is triggered when a potential customer adds items to the shopping cart and leaves the website without checking out. This best practice helps reduce abandoned cart rates and boost sales.

Robert Johnson, Coast Appliances

Stay consistent

Staying consistent while not being overbearing is the key to converting customers with a drip campaign. A good practice to implement with a drip campaign is having an automatic email to be sent within 24 hours.

Having a follow up email reminding customers of their abandoned cart within the first day will make sure it stays fresh on their mind.

If the customer isn’t converted with the follow up email, having a third email sent by the end of week with a discount offer could do the trick. Making sure to stay consistent will ensure you are able to have an effective campaign.

Charles Tichenor IV, Disrupter School

Time your emails right and make them engaging 

Decide first how often and at what intervals you want to send emails. Depending on the campaign kind, this will happen. With fresh leads, you need to follow up right away, however, with subscribers, newsletters can be delivered weekly or monthly.

Your email’s content must be pertinent, interesting, and succinct.

Per the email, stick to one subject and avoid overusing links, attachments, and CTAs. Add a few well-selected images to the emails to make them bright and engaging. Not sending too many emails to your list is one of the most important drip campaign best practices to keep in mind.

Generally speaking, it’s preferable to space out for a few days. You must also take into account the best days and times to send, which may depend on the schedules and time zones of your recipients.

Richard Harless, AZ Flat Fee

Know your audience and speak to their experience

Consumers are becoming more and more savvy and know when they are being marketed to. My advice is to incorporate personalisation techniques into your strategy to engage the attention of the reader.

For example, speak to the consumer’s personal experiences with your company, such as past purchases. Educate yourself as to why your customer bought your product. Perhaps it was for a gift? If so, they may be likely to buy your product again at the same time of year in the future.

To do this, segment your email list with this criteria. Then set up a drip campaign addressing them directly and speaking to their past purchase. Schedule the campaign to send at the same time the following year to encourage another purchase.

From my experience, consumers are likely to respond positively to your drip campaign when it is addressing them directly, and speaking to their personal experiences with your company.

Taleisha Barker, Flowers Across Brisbane

Make each email short and concise with a clear message

A drip campaign’s beauty is that you naturally don’t need to cram a lot of information into each email. You may distribute information throughout the email series using the built-in formatting.

Profit from that.

The likelihood that your audience will interact with your content is increased by concise paragraphs, a brief email overall, and a clear message. Your email receivers will lose interest in your message if it has lengthy paragraphs and rambling tales that don’t get to the point.

Amit Biwaal, Amit Biwaal

Send emails that add value to the recipient

When it comes to drip campaigns, one best practice is ensuring that each email in the campaign adds value to the recipient. This could mean providing helpful information, offering a discount or special offer, or simply reminding the recipient of your product or service.

Start with the subject line. It is the first thing that a recipient will see, so it’s important to make it count. Keep it short and to the point, and make sure it’s relevant to the rest of the email. Personalize your message as much as possible. Include the recipient’s name in the subject line and throughout the email.

Providing educational content leads to customer satisfaction. If you can solve a problem that your recipient is facing, they will be more likely to remember your product or service the next time they need it. Whatever the case, each email should provide some value to the reader to encourage them to continue reading and engaging with your brand.

Erik Emanuelli, ErikEmanuelli.com

Closing thoughts on drip campaign best practices

With their relative ease to launch and high return on investment, drip campaigns are fast becoming a must-have for any online venture. But it’s important to avoid firing off messages willy nilly. Hopefully, our list of drip campaign best practices can help you get the most from this powerful strategy.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past few months, you’ve likely heard about ChatGPT or one of its competitors and how AI writing tools are revolutionizing the wild world of blogging. But, is it something you should use for your blog? In this post, we’ll explore how to write a blog post using AI – the right way.

And, before you come at me, I should state I’m a writer that makes a living from creating content every week. I’m not on #TeamAI, but I’m also not exactly on #TeamNoAI either. Hopefully, by the end of this post you’ll understand why I’m writing about blogging with AI at all, and have some ideas of how to use it ethically and correctly for your own content.

What exactly is AI? And what is AI writing software?

TechTarget refers to AI or artificial intelligence as “the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems.” By extension, AI writing software is supposed to simulate content written by human writers.

With the use of algorithms, suggestions, and a lot of complicated computerized 1s and 0s, AI writing software should theoretically be able to take a prompt a user gives it, and deliver text content back to the user. The reason it’s causing such a stir in the writing world is that it can generate large bits of text in mere seconds.

What was taking content writers hours to complete can be created without breaking a sweat. Of course, that’s not to say what is generated is accurate, and not even necessarily great content. However, as I’ve played with several different AI writing tools at this point, I have to admit it is certainly impressive what the different software can spit out.

What can AI accomplish?

I think that what AI can accomplish depends largely on your goals. The different functions I’ve seen AI writing tools perform include, but aren’t limited to:

• Writing first-draft intros and conclusions for blog posts
• Generating a list of blog topics to write about
• Creating different heading and title options for blog posts
• Summarizing the points of a blog or article, or even just a section of the text for a better understanding
• Generating product descriptions for ecommerce stores
• Writing entire blog posts, articles, essays, poems, and even songs
• Analyzing the tone to determine if a block of text is professional, casual, funny, or depressing
• Creating landing pages for websites
• Writing social media posts to promote content, ideas, and views
• Generating ideas for videos, podcast episodes, and other types of content
• Brainstorm content marketing ideas
• Writing ad copy
• Answer questions (albeit not necessarily factual in its response)
• Breakdown complicated ideas into easier-to-digest ones, or beef up generic content with SAT words (For example, WordHero’s “Explain It To A Child” and “Explain It Like a Professor” functions)

Of course, this is only for the actual writing portion of blogging. I’ve seen so many tutorials and articles expressing various methods of using AI tools for everything from creating complementary YouTube videos for blog posts to generating AI artwork.

Since this article is about how to write a blog post using AI, I’ll do my best to keep my focus on that. So, is it possible for a blogger or content creator to use AI writing tools to create high-quality content? Let’s first take a look at the ethical considerations.

Ethical considerations of writing blog posts with AI

Aside from the ethical considerations related to carbon emissions generated because of the computing power AI tech is causing, some people look at using AI to write blog posts as straight-up plagiarism.

I spoke with SEO and copywriting expert Ryan Brock who is the Chief Solution Officer for DemandJump. He said whether we like it or not, Chat GPT, and all these other AI writing tools are just plagiarism. Period.

In his opinion, it scrapes the internet and then repackages it in a slightly different structure and gives it back to you. He says no matter how you look at it, “It’s plagiarism and that’s just not cool.”

He went on to say by scraping other people’s content, you’re not providing any new value to anyone. That’s not how you build trust factor if you’re trying to establish yourself as a thought leader (or if you’re trying to sell something).

On the flip side of things, Ryan admitted that for answering basic questions that are evergreen and don’t need a lot of fact-checking, it would help someone come up with ideas and break down basic concepts faster. But to actually use that in a blog post he says is doing more harm than good in the long run.

He’s not alone in this sentiment.

Joyce O’Day wrote an article back in July 2022 that basically said if you’re using AI writing tools, the content isn’t yours. She said, “All published content — popular or academic — that utilizes artificial intelligence should be appropriately labeled with the name of the AI software listed as a co-author. Otherwise, authors are taking credit for content that is not their intellectual property, which is plagiarism.”

The Guardian reported, “The use of AI tools to generate writing that can be passed off as one’s own has been dubbed ‘AIgiarism’ by the American venture capitalist Paul Graham, whose wife, Jessica Livingston, is one of the backers of OpenAI.”

I’ve seen many copywriters and content creators state in online forums such as Reddit, as well as within Facebook Groups and on LinkedIn that the act of simply pulling content from AI software is not ethical. To make matters worse, in many cases, depending on the complexity of the subject, it could be generating completely false information.

While every writing solution I’ve come across has stated it’s not responsible for the accuracy of the text that is generated, I’m not sure everyone takes the time to fact-check the content that is given to them. In fact, I personally know of a few people that have turned in shoddy work that needed to be corrected because they relied more on AI software than their own common sense. Needless to say, they lost work as a result.

Some content writers are leaning heavily into AI

While using AI for writing may not be seen as completely ethical, it’s no secret that a lot of freelancers are leaning heavily into it for content creation. One such freelance writer that is getting her fair share of flack for this opinion is “Fiverr Millionaire” and author of the book “Freelance Your Way to Freedom,” Alexandra Fasulo. The self-proclaimed Freelance Fairy believes that AI is the way of the future and she has stated she is glad it’s making waves in the world.

In fact, she recently took to Instagram to discuss Fiverr’s new category for freelancers dedicated to AI where she discussed freelancers charging to edit ChatGPT-generated articles to earn more money in less time.

At the same time, she’s certain that AI will not replace freelancers altogether. For example, one of the gigs she referenced in a TikTok video was to proofread, fact-check, and add hyperlinks to AI text.

Could edited AI text be the ethical way to produce quality content, but get it done faster and for less money? Perhaps.

I guess the real question we all need to ask ourselves is, where do we draw our ethical line in the sand?

Even Google has walked back its initial statements that it would completely downgrade a website’s search rankings if it used AI. In April 2022 Search Engine Journal reported Google’s John Mueller stated that AI-generated content was considered spam. Then, in January 2023, the publication reported Google is now saying AI content is okay as long as it’s high-quality and helpful to the user.  Perhaps this is because Google is working on an AI platform to compete with ChatGPT, or maybe they just don’t want to turn off all the potential advertisers that are using AI to produce content. Who knows for sure?

What about SEO considerations with using AI writing tools?

While we’re talking Google, let’s consider SEO for a moment. Can you write blog content using AI and have that written content rank in search results?

Based on all the research I’ve done for this post, and people I’ve talked to that are much smarter than I am, the basic answer is yes, but with a major caveat.

You have to add a lot more to the post generated with AI before you can ever hope to rank with it!

In other words, if you copy and paste content generated from your favorite AI writing solution into WordPress (or whatever CMS you’re using), no, you probably won’t rank well for it.

But, if you take that base piece and improve upon it – ahem, make it MUCH better – sure, you can rank with it.

Here are the steps you need to take if getting an AI-generated article to rank well is your goal:

1. Research keywords. Don’t generate the text until you have done a thorough keyword research session.

• While researching keywords, consider your ideal customer, and what they will actually be looking for that could ultimately lead them to your page.
• Consider the questions they are asking and the pain points they are looking to solve and how your product or service can solve them.

2. Come up with article ideas. Go to your favorite AI writing solution and add a simple prompt. For example, let’s assume you’re a personal trainer trying to get more clients in the Scottsdale, Arizona area. Next, we’ll assume you’re trying to rank for Best Personal Trainer in Scottsdale. So in this case, the prompt we’ll input is “Give me 10 article ideas for the Best Personal Trainer in Scottsdale.”

3. Generate an outline. Using one of the prompts, let’s generate an outline for the post. In this case, we’ll use the prompt “10 Reasons to Hire a Personal Trainer in Scottsdale: Benefits and Results” Again we’ll go to our AI writing solution and prompt it to create an outline for a blog post on that topic.

4. Write the post. You have two options at this point and this is where things get tricky.

• Option 1 – You could technically re-prompt your writing software to address each of the points in the outline and create a pretty decent article
• Option 2 – Write the post yourself addressing the outline ideas and add in real examples and testimonials that show off your expertise and authority on the subjects

5. Refine and optimize the post. Edit, and add to the post to make it even better. To do this you can:

• Add an FAQ section to include more of the keywords people are looking for (but don’t keyword stuff the post!)
• Include some images that are optimized with proper Alt Tags and descriptions (Compress the images before loading them into the post to improve page load time!)
• Break up larger paragraphs into easier-to-read shorter paragraphs
• Add more subheads for skimmers
• Include links to authoritative sites where relevant
• Include links to your own blog posts that expand on ideas presented in the post
• Create a solid meta description that tells search engines what the post is about (Don’t forget to use the keyword(s) that you’re trying to rank for in your description!)

6. Publish and promote. It might take some time for your post to start showing up in search engine result pages (SERPs), but you can start sharing it across social media, in your newsletter, and even in forums like Reddit and Quora. Just be careful not to spam!

7. Next, you need to write more posts. One solid blog post doesn’t show off your E-E-A-T! Google released an update in December 2022 that to improve the rating of your quality it’s previous E-A-T guidelines are no longer enough if you hope to win out over your competitors.

• E-A-T “stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.”
• So what is the extra E? Experience!

DemandJump recommends writing around 16 posts centered on the same subject to rank higher than your competitors. They refer to this as a Pillar Based Marketing campaign. It’s similar to Hubspot’s “topic clusters” way of writing which involves writing long-form content about several subtopics related to one central topic.

So in this case, you could go back to step 2 and take all the blog post ideas generated from your AI writing solution and repeat steps 3-7 for all 10 of the ideas it gave you. Then, interlink all of them so they support one another and shout from the digital rooftops that you are an expert on the subject that has authority, trustworthiness and experience to back up your claims online.

5 AI tools that can help you blog better

What tools can you use to help you write your blog posts? There are several different options available. Rather than get into the specific brands (especially since more are coming online every day, it seems), I’ll just share what you should be considering to make your blog post writing easier on you:

• A keyword research tool
• An AI writing tool – preferably one that does more than write a paragraph. Look for one that can give you ideas for:
  • Headers
  • Meta descriptions
  • Content briefs
  • Email subjects
  • Videos
  • Blog topics
  • Blog post outlines, etc.
• A spelling and grammar checker
• A plagiarism detection tool
• A graphics and/or image generation tool

How to write a blog post using AI

So how do you ethically write a blog post using AI? The most basic answer is: Don’t copy and paste AI-generated text verbatim. So what if you can get 2,000 words written in a matter of seconds? Even with different prompts for different sections of a full post, I wouldn’t recommend slapping it all together and calling it complete.

The better way, and the more ethical way, is to perhaps use it as a means to improve my workflow and break through writer’s block.

That is what I do when the cursor on my Google Doc blinks at me longer than I like. I will throw a random prompt or two in just to get the creative juices flowing.

From there, go and do your own research and craft a message that actually delivers value. I will say that using this method has saved me a lot of time and energy because as someone who pumps out a lot of content, it’s easy for me to hit a wall and simply not know what to say next. So, having writing solutions that can inspire content ideas is helpful.

Then again, if I’m really stumped and don’t know where to go next with a post, I also go to sites like Neil Patel’s Answer the Public, AlsoAsked, and even DemandJump to get insights into what people are actually searching for online about a variety of subjects. In the case of one of my clients, when they get lost for content creation ideas, they go to the users and ask them what they want to know more about and then we create content campaigns around that.

All this to say, I do see AI as a fun tool for busting through writer’s block and inspiring new ideas.

And, it’s great for coming up with blog post ideas if you’re stumped for what to cover next on your website.

Conclusion

We’ve covered a lot in this post, but my biggest hope is that I’ve convinced you not to just blindly use AI writing apps to spit out a bunch of low-quality content. Your readers and customers deserve better than that. Sure, use all the tools you want to speed up the process and eliminate writer’s block. But, don’t rely on it so heavily that you can’t tell where the AI writing assistant ends and your authenticity begins.

There is definitely a place for AI. And, I’m all for using it to improve your content writing process. From here, I would recommend checking out as many tools as you want. Take advantage of every free trial you can find and play and test to your heart’s content. Then, come back, and sit down to draft a real strategy that will actually convert. Happy blogging!

If you’re wondering how to do social media for your business and think you need a roadmap to navigate the ins and outs of today’s social media landscape, you’re in the right place.

Use this guide to position your venture for success on the social platforms where your customers spend their time. 

Let’s get started.

The discussion about social media for small businesses used to be simpler. It revolved around a few social networks, which had differences that were easy to parse. Instagram equaled pictures; YouTube equaled videos. “Facebook? It’s the one with opposable thumbs.” 

Social media platforms have climbed out of their primitive goop and evolved from simple organisms to complex forms. And, despite the vast landscape of social media, platforms are evolving to look more and more alike.

Live video? Sure — on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest and Twitter.

Yet no single map precisely navigates the landscape of more than one platform. It’s worth it to take the time to do it right, though — by being authentic, offering content your audience values, and building relationships with your customers and prospects.

Social media marketing can generate returns like nothing else can.

You won’t go viral with your first post. And you shouldn’t expect to boom on every platform simultaneously. But the payoffs are life-changing for those small business owners who learn how to do social media the right way.

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Simply put, social media marketing is the process of sharing content (photos, videos and text) on different social media channels, where it’s viewed by the public. It’s an extension of your digital marketing efforts.

At the core of social media for small businesses is the opportunity to connect with new and existing customers and build your sphere of influence through those outlets.

Central to your success with social media marketing is your customers’ and prospects’ ability to find value in what you have to offer.

Mindset: You have to earn people’s attention on social media; no one owes it to you, and they won’t pay attention unless something is in it for them.

Your audience’s default is to do nothing.

Their lives were fine before you arrived.

Their lives will be fine after you go away.

Your goal is to help them feel enough excitement about your pitch to overcome that inertia.

— Wes Kao (@wes_kao) December 13, 2022

By learning how to do social media in a way that provides clear value to your customers and prospects, you can::

1. Establish expertise. When you share your knowledge freely and display your expertise on social media, you build more than just a following — you create an audience that remembers you as a thought leader in your industry.
2. Build brand awareness and audience. You already undertake a wide variety of brand awareness tactics routinely. Social media marketing is just the latest evolution of setting up a booth at industry events and sharing your elevator pitch.
3. Drive funnel and website traffic. Sharing a valuable freebie or new product announcement that interests your target audience can generate clicks to drive traffic to your funnel, selling your products and services.
4. Be remembered. Attention is a powerful currency, and attention from social media marketing results in you being remembered as the “it” person for what you offer.
5. See conversions. Ultimately, these activities all lead to the same place: conversions.

While a business’s ultimate goal is sales, social media marketing can also result in other powerful indirect conversions:

• Referrals. Someone who’s never used your services but remembers you as “the X person” will be quick to recommend you.
• Industry elevation. Being included in industry publications and round-ups won’t drive sales directly but are a fantastic way to reach an even larger audience.

Exercise: Look for examples of successful social media marketing from brands that you buy from. Can you identify the purpose behind one of their social posts? Start to pull back the curtain on social media marketing.

Bottom line: Always remember why you’re sharing. Learning how to do social media to reap its benefits rests on sharing with a clear purpose in mind.

Using social media marketing as a funnel

Social media marketing unlocks a spectrum of possibilities for your business — both positive and negative. And no, I’m not talking about negative comments.

This is an important realization: You don’t own your social media channels, either the content published there or your followers. Social media accounts live on borrowed land, and you could always lose access to what you’ve built there. Every single business still needs a website.

Always treat social media as a funnel that leads back to your owned content.

Vine disappeared overnight in 2016 (though it might return). Pinterest and LinkedIn accounts get mistakenly suspended. Instagram and Facebook accounts get hacked and held for a hefty ransom. TikTok has been banned altogether by a (potentially growing) list of countries.

Social media marketing is a way to explode your brand awareness, but small businesses should continue the conversation off of the page.

The benefits of social media marketing are exciting, but if you don’t enter the jungle with clear expectations you’ll quickly get discouraged.

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Setting realistic expectations

On any given social network sit countless abandoned profiles from creators who gave up on their social media marketing strategy, leaving their accumulated audience, followers and invested time to collect dust.

The most common mistake? Not accounting for the buy-in period of sweat equity that social media marketing requires. 

As a Pinterest marketer, I’ve seen countless creators loftily declare “flags at half-mast — Pinterest is dead!” They abandon their strategy, making a dire miscalculation: it takes months for Pinterest to even index your pins for search results.

Exercise: Research how long growth takes on the social channels you’re pursuing.

@cherylporterdiva It’s #vocalwarmup time! #vocalexercise #fyp #cherylportervocalcoach #vocalcoach ♬ original sound – Cheryl Porter | Vocal Coach

Give your social media strategy time

There’s no hard figure for how long it takes to build an audience on social media, but as a rule of thumb:

Don’t start executing a social media strategy on any platform if you’re not committed to at least a year of work.

Give yourself time to:

• Learn the ins and outs of making quality content.
• Nurture a real, genuine relationship with viewers and earn quality followers.
• Upskill your graphic design, video editing or whatever skills the platform demands.

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Should you spend money on social media marketing?

Part of the allure of social media has long been the price tag: free. Minus your time and the resources used to develop quality content, of course. Those resources are especially hefty, though, to an entrepreneur juggling all their daily responsibilities while exploring how to do social media for the first time.

Small businesses can make three main forms of financial investment in social media marketing:

• Paid ads
• Social media management
• Software

Social media ads

Ads can seem like a social media marketing hack: spend some money and see your reach skyrocket. But they aren’t the solution for every product, service or small business.

“Paid ads aren’t a magic solution where you spend money and immediately get sales,” warns marketer Ravi Davda. “It must be done properly, but it’s a way to be seen and drive traffic rapidly, rather than counting solely on organic methods.”

So, how do you know if you’re ready for social media ads?

Social media ads specialist Joe Brady shared this advice:

“When you have a proven offer with positive reviews, that’s when you’re ready to pursue paid ads. You don’t want to run ads for something that’s not been proven. Otherwise, you won’t know if it’s the ads that are the problem or what you’re selling is not in demand.”

Social media management

You can hire social media managers, sometimes also referred to as ghostwriters or freelance content creators, to create and publish content on your behalf.

You can hire help that’s:

• Platform-specific, such as a Twitter manager.
• Content-specific, such as hiring a short-form video content creator.

Note: This is not to be confused with an influencer, who would create content for your account and post it on their own social media profiles.

LinkedIn ghostwriter Renate Linnenkoper shared this insight:

“It’s easy to end up spending hours producing social media content instead of actually having the time to find new clients. Outsourcing your social media content creation is a great way to attract dream clients to your profile through storytelling content without having to rely on paid ads.”

Both of these financial investments save time, but there’s also another option that fits every budget.

Editor’s note: The experts at GoDaddy’s Digital Marketing Services can help you attract and manage your customers with targeted social ad and email campaigns — and measure your success.

Free social media management tools

Behind every social media marketing strategy is a host of systems and tools that save time.

Building a social media presence takes consistency, and that’s best achieved using a content calendar and scheduling tools.

A few popular social media management tools include:

• Sprout Social for scheduling, analytics, engagement and account management.
• Free native schedulers within the different social channels.
• Collaborative software such as Airtable, Notion or Trello to help visualize your social media content calendar and plan out social media campaigns.

Don’t worry about picking specific tools from the get-go; instead, reference this list once you’ve picked which social media channels you’ll focus on.

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Despite their overlaps, each social media channel has unique strengths.

An effective social media strategy weighs the strengths of each social network and looks at what type of content thrives there.

Ask yourself these questions as you evaluate the best social media channel(s) for your business:

• Who is my target customer, and where do they spend their time?
• Do I prefer to write instead of sharing visuals?
• What content will I routinely share?

Let’s see which platform is your smartest starting point.

LinkedIn

Post content on LinkedIn providing value and showing that you’re a reliable source of information on your given subject, and the recommendations will start to come in.

Sound too easy?

As personal branding specialist Jessie van Breugel puts it, “Treat LinkedIn as your job for six months and you’ll never be out of work again.” Jessie has used his account to grow his email list and position himself as a go-to source on personal branding.

Important: That translates to building your own personal account, not your company’s LinkedIn page.

LinkedIn roll-call:

• Content type: Text-based content with optional photos or videos; plus live video.
• Content style: Can be polished, relating to your small business, or can be personal and casual, relating to your lifestyle.
• Unique opportunity: Instead of just creating fresh content for yourself every day, you can grow your network by simply engaging with content from others (like this). 

Pinterest

Plot twist: Pinterest’s actually not a social network.

Pinterest is a search engine where users look for answers to their queries. When a user enters a term in the search bar, they’re directed to images or videos (called pins) that link back to the websites of bloggers, brands and small businesses.

As a Pinterest specialist, my Pinterest account reaches millions of people per month, which has driven website traffic, brought in new clients, and grown my email list.

The opportunities are enormous, but Pinterest isn’t the ideal platform for every small business owner. Businesses with a lot of quality links on their website (products, blog posts, etc.) are going to see the most success.

Pinterest roll-call:

• Content type: Visual content, either static or video; plus live video on Pinterest.
• Content style: Seasonal, informational and lifestyle.
• Unique opportunity: Longevity. Content on Pinterest lasts for years, not days.

Related: The entrepreneur’s guide to Pinterest marketing

TikTok

TikTok is the adolescent of the social media family, but there’s an audience there for all demographics. In 2021, it became the most visited website in the world, but do you have the type of content to grow your business on TikTok?

In order to answer yes, you must be prepared to produce a lot of content focused on the same topic. 

SEO specialist Kate Smoothy, who has amassed some 19,000 TikTok followers and uses the platform to grow her email list and client base, shared this advice:

“You don’t have to be focussed on one type of content on TikTok, but you do need to be focused on your niche. I would actually encourage creators to try lots of different types of content to find what their audience likes best! But stay in your lane.”

@webhivedigital You can pay a lot of money for SEO tools but you don’t need to. Some of the best SEO tools are free! #seo #searchengineoptimisation #digitalmarketing #marketingtips #seotipsandtricks ♬ original sound – Kate Smoothy | Websites & SEO

TikTok roll-call:

• Content type: Short-form video, or static content with a video or audio element, accompanied by text; plus live video.
• Content style: Trending, informational, lifestyle or entertainment.
• Unique opportunity: Virality and quick growth potential.

Instagram

Open Instagram today and you’ll notice a very different type of content than you used to see pre-2020. Once a social network for hyper-curated photos, Instagram is “no longer just a square photo-sharing app.”

Small business owners can now reach new customers and clients through photos (posts), permanent videos (reels), disappearing videos, text or images (stories) and direct messages.

Most platforms have a direct messaging feature, but Instagram is one of the social media platforms where this feature really shines.

Charlotte Brand uses Instagram to find new clients for her content marketing business, and shared this advice for new small businesses joining the platform:

“Instagram is FULL of marketing potential for all types of small businesses, but when it comes to growing your account, you have to focus on the right metrics. Don’t worry about likes and followers too much; instead, focus on building a community and providing valuable content for your audience.”

Charlotte noted that sharing on Instagram stories provides personal, human connection like no other social network. Users watch stories as much or even more than they scroll the home feed, which means that casual and uncurated access to connect with your audience is uncapped.

Instagram roll-call:

• Content type: Photos, short-form videos and disappearing content; plus live video.
• Content style: Informative, lifestyle or entertainment.
• Unique opportunity: Business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing, specifically in stories.

Related: How to sell on Instagram

YouTube

Like Pinterest, YouTube is actually a search engine, and the content you share there has an incredible shelf life: videos sit in search results for years.

Video marketing specialist Doug Dibert, Jr., has been using video marketing since 2005 and says that YouTube’s big opportunity lies in the fact that there’s more demand than supply.

“Imagine you discovered Google My Business before anyone else did. You’re getting all the benefits and your competition is baffled as to why you’re winning,” he says. “That’s what YouTube is right now for businesses.”

Google owns YouTube, which means that videos also get prime placement across Google search results.

The platform also offers a special direct monetization opportunity, where accounts (called channels) that meet certain engagement thresholds are eligible to directly monetize their content.

YouTube roll-call:

• Content type: Video, traditionally longer-form but also short-form (YouTube Shorts); plus live video.
• Content style: Informative, lifestyle or entertainment.
• Unique opportunity: Visibility across both YouTube and Google, and high demand for content.

Related: How to get more customers with YouTube

Facebook

Facebook might be an old social media platform, but it still has an enormous and diverse audience, across all demographics.

Not only does this present small business owners with many potential leads, but users are also actively turning to businesses’ Facebook pages for information like reviews, business hours and direct communication through Facebook messenger.

Arthur Freydin is an entrepreneur with 10 years of Facebook marketing experience and these insights into the power of the platform:

“The platform allows business owners to communicate updates, new products, discounts, opening hours, customer testimonials, and much more on a platform with a very wide audience.”

Business owners can market their business through a Facebook business page or in Facebook groups using their personal account. It also has an incredibly robust ad system.

Facebook roll-call:

• Content type: Text, images or video; plus live video.
• Content style: Photos, videos and short-form video content as well as business page features consisting of reviews, business hours and direct messaging.
• Unique opportunity: The ability to reach your target market through paid ads (called “boosting”). 

Related: How to use Facebook Messenger for business

Twitter

Twitter is the fastest-moving social media platform, where a post (called a tweet) has the shortest lifespan when compared to the other platforms we’ve looked at .. a mere 23 minutes.

But a post on Twitter also requires the least amount of work. Currently, a tweet has a limit of 280 characters. That might change, but the concept won’t: tweets aren’t meant to be profound works of art.

The nature of the platform rewards short, spicy and conversation-provoking content, which makes it ideal for the big-picture part of your brand messaging.

Samson and Cecilia Hollmerus, who together run a small business offering travel coaching and community, use Twitter to build brand awareness:

“We use Twitter for our top-of-funnel content, and our aim is to create brand awareness for our travel community and courses.”

9 Insider travel tips from experienced globetrotters:

That will save you:

• Time
• Money
• Energy

Without compromising quality for your upcoming trip pic.twitter.com/vcbZDgixS3

— Samson | Spontaneous Backpackers (@spontaneousbkpk) December 25, 2022

Twitter roll-call:

• Content type: Short-form text, can include images and videos; plus live video.
• Content style: Short, timely and topical.
• Unique opportunity: The size of the stage. Tweet about a trending topic using a hashtag and your words can be seen by tens of thousands of viewers, no matter how many followers you have.

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You’ll find no shortage of tips online about how to use social media — a single TikTok video might flash 15 tips in a matter of seconds.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Follow these five basic steps and you’ll be ready to start creating the kind of social media content that converts.

1. Do your homework

The first step in any successful social media marketing strategy is listening.

See what kinds of accounts are popular in your industry and research:

• Who’s being followed?
• What topics are popular?
• What content is resonating?

Listening might sound passive, but small business influencer Ivana Taylor shared this exercise:

“Make a list of frequently asked questions and answer them. Or, share your secrets, shortcuts and hacks that will help your customers or audience get better at what you do.”

Actively engage in the listening process by:

• Writing down frequently asked questions (FAQ).
• Saving good posts that you see.
• Creating an ongoing idea document.

As you listen and gather content ideas, it’s time to define your social media marketing strategy.

2. Define your strategy

Start defining your social media strategy by answering these questions:

1. Which social media platform will you start with?
2. How many months will you commit to creating content, regardless of results?
3. How often will you post?

Bear in mind your target outcomes.

Target outcomes

What is the goal of each social media post? These goals can cover:

• Sales
• Education
• Authenticity
• Follower growth
• Lead generation
• Brand awareness
• Email list sign-ups
• Display of expertise
• Community engagement
• Data collection 

A well-rounded social media strategy would encompass all of these outcomes, even the ones that might seem less valuable, like authenticity.

Branding studio CEO Shana Sanders shared this insight into how authenticity generates more aligned leads:

“Be authentic with your social media marketing. Authenticity helps the audience see themselves being in the environment of working with you.”

Focus on creating content that covers all of these target outcomes in turn. Keep them front of mind as you’re creating social media content.

@megemikoart (shop link in my bio) #trans #elliotpage #transgender #nonbinary #lgbtqia #pridemonth #protecttranskids #lgbtsmallbusiness #fyp #comingout ♬ A Moment Apart – Hannah Stater

Add value

Anyone can post on social media, but not everyone turns their social media posts into conversions.

The biggest culprit? Failing to add value. Repurposing other small business marketing content, like sharing a link to a press release, is a losing approach.

Create content that’s:

• Funny
• Unique
• Helpful
• Engaging
• Entertaining
• Inspirational
• Conversational
• Thought-provoking
• Community-oriented

You already have the ideas for your value-driven social media marketing; you just need to identify them.

Business and marketing strategist Annelise Worn shared this advice:

“Ask yourself: ‘what does my ideal client need to know, think and believe about me and my offer in order to say yes?’ Write them all down. Categorize them into three buckets. That’s your content.”

Exercise: Hold a 15-minute brainstorming session where you write down every single answer to this question.

Identify your target market

Before you can create content that speaks to your audience, you have to know who your audience is.

Consider both demographics and psychographics, including:

• Age
• Gender
• Interests
• Struggles
• Education level
• Income or budget

Getting into the demographic information can start to feel overly technical, but copywriting specialist and professor Jasmin Alić, who’s written for Fortune 500 companies, shares this advice:

“Every time you post on social media as your brand, remember you’re speaking to humans. Not businesses and robots — you’d be surprised how many business owners don’t understand this concept.”

Exercise: Just like an actor breaking the fourth wall, look the camera dead in the eyes and speak directly to the viewer. Use “you,” not “you guys.” Likewise, say “I,” not an anonymous “we.”

When your social media marketing converts and a viewer is ready to become a follower or purchase your products or services, it’ll be the act of a single human. Speak to them.

Related: How to update your business for changing demographics

3. Create shareable content

After you’ve defined your social media marketing goals and understand your audience, you must reach viewers with content that engages them.

Digital marketer Yogesh Kumar simplifies the type of content that gets shared online to just two words: “People share creative and relevant content with their followers.”

Exercise: Think about your own behavior as a social media user. What type of content do you deem share-worthy?

I’ve edited 3+ million words.

Here are 8 common content writing mistakes,

and how to fix them:

— Erica Schneider (@ericasmyname) May 23, 2022

Related: How to create content calendars

4. Engage with your audience

Here’s one of the golden rules of social media marketing:

It’s not about you; it’s about them.

A relationship between two entities cannot be built if one party speaks about themselves into a megaphone. Your followers must be the focus of all of your social media marketing efforts, and engaging with them is an important part of this rule.

• Ask questions.
• Answer questions.
• Respond to every comment.
• Thank viewers for sharing their thoughts.
• Engage one-on-one in direct messages (DM) with viewers when appropriate.

Lyssa Jackson, instructor and program manager at LinkedIn, shared this insight:

“Direct messaging is for starting conversations and for building our like, know and trust factor. Even if you don’t make a sale or book a call right away, approaching DMs with a relationship-first mindset will open your network if you’re clear about the problem you solve.”

Exercise: Make time to send followers or peers in your audience thoughtful messages (if it’s appropriate on the platform).

5. Measure success

What does success look like on social media?

Consider these key metrics:

• Followers and views. These numbers give a sense of reach.
• Engagement. Are people commenting on your content?
• Shares. What content is motivating your followers to share it?
• Clicks. Which posts are driving traffic to your website?
• Action. Once they’re on your turf, are they converting?

For tangible measurements, look at platform analytics to access data from within each platform.

For intangibles, look at the quality of community you’re building and how qualified your inbound leads are.

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Conclusion and next steps

You’re making a wise investment by learning how to use social media marketing to grow your small business.

Instead of opening a brick-and-mortar establishment and waiting for potential leads to walk in, you’re going out into the world and finding them.

• Start small.
• Experiment.
• Test your content.
• Try out different platforms.
• Play with the timing of your posts.
• Treat every social media post as an opportunity to improve.

Watch your content evolve. You have no idea how your business might evolve with it.

Develop a quality, successful social media marketing strategy that’s an agent of your overall marketing goals, and your business will never be the same.

Wondering how to do SEO but not sure where to start? You’ve come to the right place. Search engine optimization (SEO) can drive quality traffic to your website and grow your business — and this guide will walk you through how to do SEO the right way to grow your business.

How to do SEO: A beginner’s guide

Let’s get started!

What is SEO, and why does it matter?

SEO is the process of optimizing your web pages to organically increase your website’s visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) or search engine listings.

The primary goal of search engine optimization is to get organic traffic — the traffic that comes when a visitor or searcher clicks on a search result from your site.

With about 90% of the overall search market, Google is currently the largest search engine. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t optimize for other search engines, such as Yahoo, Bing, Apple and Baidu.

Why does SEO matter?

Billions of Google users search for information, products or services online every day. In fact, Google processes about 99,000 search queries per second. As a result, search engines are the biggest potential traffic sources for websites.

Generally, the higher your website ranks in search results, the more visitors it will get.

We’ll explore how to make this happen, with the help of target keywords and other specific SEO tactics, later in this article.

Still not sure if learning how to do SEO is worth your effort? Check out these facts:

• Search engine traffic comprises a significant chunk of trackable traffic to a website.
• Seventy-five percent of searchers only choose a result from the first page of SERPs.
• Top results on SERPs have a click-through rate (CTR) of 28.5 percent.
• Strong SEO practices lead to a positive user experience. In fact, Google introduced the Page Experience algorithm update in 2021 that aims at providing its users with an optimal experience.
• Effective SEO means a higher return on investment (ROI).

Convinced that it’s worthwhile to work towards improving SEO on your website to drive organic search traffic to your business? Great. Let’s keep going.

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SEO glossary

Before we go any further, let’s make sure we’re speaking the same language. SEO involves a lot of industry jargon that’s helpful to understand when optimizing your site for search engines like Google. Below are important terms to remember:

1. Keywords: Words or phrases people type or say to search engines when searching for something.
2. Long-tail keywords: Keywords or phrases with lower search volumes.
3. Keyword difficulty: This keyword research metric helps determine how difficult it is to rank for a specific keyword. It’s a great way to determine whether it’s worth investing in that keyword or phrase.
4. Keyword relevance: How important is a specific keyword or phrase to a web page? Search engines use relevancy to determine what your content is about and when deciding what pages to rank for a specific search query.
5. Search volume: Refers to the number of search queries for a specific search phrase in Google within a stated time frame.
6. Backlinks: Links from a website’s page to another website. The links should be from a relevant and high-quality page to be effective.
7. Search query: A keyword combination or phrase users enter into search engines to find what they are looking for.
8. SERPs: An acronym for Search Engine Results Pages and refers to pages that search engines provide when a user performs a search query.
9. Indexing: The search engine’s process of organizing information before a search for faster responses to queries.
10. Ranking factor: Refers to the criteria that search engines apply to evaluate web pages when compiling their search results rankings.
11. On-page SEO: The process of optimizing web pages to achieve better rankings and earn organic traffic. It involves publishing high-quality, relevant content and optimizing headlines, images and HTML tags (meta, title, and header).
12. Off-page SEO: Refers to actions taken away from your website that impact your rankings in SERPs.
13. Googlebot: This refers to Google’s web crawler and involves a desktop and a mobile crawler
14. Search algorithm: A collection of formulas that search engines use to determine the quality and relevance of a web page to a search query.
15. Sitemap: A list of website pages within a domain or a file that provides information about pages, videos, and how different files within your site relate.
16. White hat SEO: SEO practices approved by search engines like Google.
17. Black hat SEO: SEO practices that go against search engine guidelines, including tactics like keyword stuffing, cloaking, etc., to attain a higher ranking in search results.

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Search engine basics

There is no SEO without search engines. Let’s get familiar with the ins and outs of search engines, especially how they work to provide personalized results to users.

Search engines are web-based tools that enable users to search for information on the internet. In other words, these are complex programs that identify information in the vast internet

database that matches a user’s search terms. Google is currently the most popular search engine.

Search engines have two primary parts that help them achieve their goals: search index and search algorithms.

Google provides its users with two types of search results: organic and paid. The latter option is one of the ways search engines make money. Ideally, the advertiser pays anytime a user clicks on a paid search result (aka PPC). More on that later …

How Google builds its index

Each search engine has its unique way of building a search index. For the sake of this article, let’s look at the breakdown of Google’s process.

URLs

Google’s process of building a search index starts with identifying URLs. A URL, which stands for Uniform Resource Locator, is the internet address people use to access a web page. Here are some common ways Google achieves this:

• From sitemaps: Sitemaps help Google understand the important files on your site.
• From backlinks: Google library has billions of web pages. Linking your new page to a known page allows Google to identify it from there.
• URL submission: As a site owner, you can request the crawling of an individual URL in the Google Search Console.

Crawling

This is a discovery process where search engines use a team of robots (crawlers or spiders) to find new and updated content. This can be in the form of blog content, video, images, PDFs, etc., that’s discoverable by links.

Processing and rendering

After Googlebot has crawled pages, it works to understand what the pages are all about. The process involves running the page’s code to discover how it looks to the user. In other words, Googlebot is trying to find all external files involved, including images, CSS and JavaScript files, and store them for indexing.

Indexing

Finally, Google adds the crawled pages to its search index. This is where search engines fetch information when users perform a search.

Google ranking factors

Google currently has more than 200 ranking factors. While some of these factors are known, others are yet to be disclosed. Here are a few of the big ones we know about:

Relevance

Google aims to provide the most relevant information to a search query. As such, relevance is a valuable ranking factor that should drive your content creation strategy.

Backlinks

Getting relevant and high-quality links from other websites to your site can help improve your Google rankings. However, the emphasis here is quality over quantity.

Mobile-friendliness

The use of mobile devices has increased significantly in the past few years. The number of mobile users stood at 15 billion in 2021 and is expected to surpass the 18 billion mark by 2025.

Having a mobile-friendly website means people on mobile devices like smartphones can easily access the web like desktop users. It’s easy to understand why Google considers mobile-friendliness when ranking web pages in search results.

Why you should track Google algorithm updates

Google algorithm is a set of rules that Google uses to provide relevant results to a search query. However, these algorithms keep changing in Google’s efforts to provide a better experience to users and improve SEO performance.

Website owners and marketers should stay abreast of these updates to increase their chances of ranking higher in search engine results.

Google algorithm updates can impact various aspects of your website, including:

1. Organic search traffic
2. Search ranking and visibility
3. Conversions
4. Revenue
5. Return on investment (ROI)

The bottom line is that algorithm updates are not meant to punish website owners but are rather a way to reward sites that provide valuable content and a better user experience.

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How does SEO work?

To help you understand how SEO works, let’s look at how people search on Google. When a user enters a search query into Google’s search bar, Google responds by providing results relevant to that query.

Google aims to deliver the most relevant and useful information to its users.

To do that, Google needs to know that these pages exist, what they contain, and their popularity. Then, using the process outlined above, Google shows the most relevant results from its massive inventory of data.

When performing a search, people use phrases related to what they are searching for. These phrases are called keywords, and users can either type them or say them (voice search).

Google has search quality ratings that analyze the quality of your content to determine when to show it on SERPs. Here’s what these ratings assess:

• The quality and quantity of the content
• Website reputation and site information
• Expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (EAT) of the content

All these measures ensure that the most relevant, useful and trustworthy web pages appear on top of search results pages.

Pro tip: Find your search engine rankings by searching the terms you are targeting. If you have a large website, use tools like SEMrush to find other terms you might be ranking for.

Key components of SEO

When learning how to do SEO, it’s important to understand that search engine optimization is a complex process. It’s easiest for beginners to break it down into these five main steps:

1. Keyword and competitor research: Find and analyze terms people use when searching for businesses like yours.
2. Content creation: Develop and publish content with users in mind.
3. On-page SEO: Optimize your website’s pages to gain a higher ranking in search engine results and improve organic traffic
4. Link building: Use off-page SEO strategies to build trust and authority from other sites.
5. Technical SEO: Take practical measures that enable search engines to find, crawl and index content more easily.

Organic vs. paid SEO

As noted above, search engine results pages contain these two types of results: Paid and organic results.

1. Paid results: Have you seen search results with a little green box with the word “Ad” when you perform a Google search? That is a paid result, meaning the website owners have paid to have the page appear on top of the search result list. This type of search engine advertising is also known as Pay Per Click (PPC).
2. Organic results: These are unpaid lists that appear on top of search results because the pages are relevant to what the searcher is looking for.

While paid results give you a higher position in the ads section, it’s crucial to know that most users ignore ads and instead select organic results.

Organic SEO is a long-term game that doesn’t provide overnight results. Be ready to put in the work and exercise patience and persistence to see the desired results.

Besides, Google and other search engines are constantly changing their algorithm, and you need to outsmart your competitors to achieve higher rankings in search engine results.

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Set up for SEO success

How you do SEO determines the results you will get. That said, your SEO efforts can be more effective if your website is set up for success.

Choose the perfect domain name

Pay close attention to the domain name you choose to represent your business online. After all, your domain determines how easy it is for your audience to find and remember your business.

Of course, most domain names work when it comes to SEO, but if you need help choosing a perfect domain name, keep these things in mind:

• Keep it short and simple. Your domain name should be easy to remember. As such, having a long domain name that’s hard to spell out or remember isn’t the way to go — a domain name with six to 14 characters that’s easy to spell is ideal.
• Stick to a .com extension. If the .com option is available, snag it. It’s the most popular domain name extension that many people expect for website names. If your chosen domain name ending in .com isn’t available, you can opt for other trusted domain name extensions such as .net and .org.
• Make your domain unique. Your domain name should stand out from your competitors and uniquely represent your brand and what it stands for.

Related: What is a domain name? Everything you need to know about domain names

Ensure a positive user experience

User experience is now a ranking factor. In fact, Google prioritizes sites that provide a positive user experience when providing results to a search query. Keep these guidelines in mind to create a positive user experience:

1. Have a mobile-friendly website. Most people use mobile devices when surfing the internet. Ensure that your website loads smoothly on both desktop and mobile. Testing your site for mobile-friendliness is easy using the Mobile-Friendly test from Google Search Console.
2. Ensure your pages load faster. Pages that load slowly on desktop and mobile devices provide a bad user experience, negatively impacting your rankings in SERPs.
3. Avoid intrusive pop-ups. While you can’t completely avoid using ads, avoid intrusive pop-up ads as they lead to a poor user experience
4. Secure your site. Use an SSL certificate (HTTPS) to prevent hackers from accessing your site and your users’ data.
5. Make your content readable. Ensure that users (no matter the device) can easily read your content. Also, use a perfect design that reflects your brand.

Related: How to add an SSL to your website — The ultimate guide on SSLs

Choose the best website structure for your business

A website’s structure involves how a website’s pages are organized, how they’re connected, and how to navigate to different pages.

Have a logical site structure that allows visitors and search engines to find content easily on your site.

You can select from three site structure options:

1. Linear or sequential structure. Best for small websites that want to present a product, service or brand in a linear manner that follows a logical path of actions.
2. Network structure. Also called web-linked, this structure allows any site page to be accessed from any other page. It’s ideal for websites with a few pages that are interconnected.
3. Hierarchical. This site structure follows a hierarchy of categories. It’s the most popular among the three options and works on any website.

Why is site structure important for SEO?

When learning SEO, it’s important to understand that a solid website structure is key to Google’s goal of serving up the most relevant search results. Here’s why:

• A logical site structure enables search engines to evaluate your pages when providing results to a search query.
• Having a solid site structure helps handle many technical SEO aspects responsible for crawling and indexing.
• An effective site structure makes it easier for a search engine to understand what your page is all about so it can show it to relevant search queries.
• It makes it easier for search engines to locate new pages.

Above all, an effective site structure facilitates a positive user experience. And user experience is a ranking factor for SEO.

Create a solid URL structure

A mentioned earlier, a URL is the internet address people use to access a web page. It consists of a protocol, a domain name and a path to a specific page on the website. To better understand these components, look at the below URL:

1. Protocol: https:/
2. Domain: godaddy.com
3. Path: /garage/invest-in-seo/

The best URL structure varies based on the type of website. For example, URL structures for ecommerce sites will vary from those of a blog website. Likewise, a URL for a social network will vary from that of a government website.

The above basic URL structure applies when creating a proper URL structure, regardless of the website’s purpose.

How does URL structure impact SEO?

URLs act as the link between your content and your users. That said, here’s how URLs can impact SEO:

• User experience. An effective URL structure should allow users and search engines to understand what a page is all about. For example, the example URL above clearly describes what website users will find when they reach their destination. This enhances the user experience, which is a Google ranking factor.
• Rankings. An effective URL helps search engine bots to crawl and index your website when providing search results to a search query.

That means optimizing your URLs can help improve Google PageRank (PR). Of course, avoid keyword stuffing in your URLs, as this is considered a black-hat SEO technique that will hurt your SEO efforts.

Follow these best practices for SEO-friendly URLs:

1. Use HTTPS protocol to make it more secure.
2. Ensure the URL is relevant.
3. Keep your URL short and simple.
4. Avoid keyword stuffing.
5. Avoid stop words (the, and, of, or, etc.) in your URL.
6. Use lowercase letters.

Related: Domain SEO — Can including keywords in domain names improve search ranking?

Install plugins

Have a WordPress website? WordPress offers powerful in-built tools to help you optimize your content for SEO, and you can use SEO plugins to turbocharge your SEO efforts. Popular SEO plugins like Yoast and Rankmath offer great suggestions and an overview of what you should change on each page to boost its ranking capabilities.

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Conduct keyword research

You can hardly talk about SEO without mentioning keywords. Users enter keywords when searching for something online, and search engines use keywords to find the information that matches the search query.

That makes keyword research a crucial aspect of SEO success.

Keyword research involves finding and analyzing phrases people use when searching for something on search engines. You can boost your search rankings by sprinkling keywords naturally throughout your website content because doing so tells search engines that your website has information that’s relevant to their search.

When your article ranks higher for the right keywords, Google will show it to users when they use those keywords to find a solution or information online. That can mean more traffic for your website.

Note: Keyword research also helps create an effective content marketing strategy, of which SEO plays an integral role.

Benefits of keyword research

In addition to improving your SEO efforts, conducting keyword research can:

• Provide insight into current market trends. Effective keyword research can provide great insight into your marketing efforts. It provides an opportunity to understand what your audience is looking for and the current relevant topics.
• Help develop authority and trust. The insights you glean into current marketing trends can help you build your brand as an authority leader in your industry. You can use your keyword research findings to create the industry-specific content that people are searching for now.
• Increase organic traffic. Identifying the best keywords and optimizing your content for those keywords will help your content rank higher on SERPs. The higher your content ranks for your target keywords, the more traffic you’ll get.

Related: How to do SEO keyword research to drive traffic to your website

What is search intent?

Search intent refers to what the user intends to solve when using specific keywords on a search engine.

Identifying user intent is crucial if you want your page to rank higher on search engines like Google.

Keywords can have different meanings for different users. That means even after identifying your target keywords, you have to interpret them to ensure they match the user’s search intent.

Search intent is divided into three categories:

1. Navigational. The user knows what they want to find (e.g., a specific domain, page, address, product, etc.).
2. Informational. The user wants to learn something or is looking for answers. The searches might be a question or phrases like why, where, what, how, etc.
3. Transactional. The user is searching for something they intend to buy. That means they know what they want and are probably looking for the best product page.

The easiest way to identify the user’s intent for a keyword is to enter the keyword into a search engine and note the type of results that show up.

How to do keyword research

When performing keyword research, look for words and phrases that you can rank for on the first page of SERPs. Here’s how to find them:

Brainstorm

Ask yourself some questions, including:

• What are the main themes/topics/focus areas on your website, especially on its most popular pages?
• What do you want to achieve with your content?
• What terms would you enter into a search engine to get your website among the top results?
• What search terms do you think your audience uses?

Then, ask other people what terms or phrases they would use to search for your website or pages without using the domain.

Make a list of all the keywords you find valuable. You can refine them in the next steps.

Study your competitors’ keywords

Another great way to identify keywords to use on your site is by checking what keywords your competitors rank for. The first step in this process is to identify your competitors — use your brainstormed keyword list to identify your competitors by searching one of your keywords to see what sites appear on top of SERPs.

Once you identify your competitor sites, leverage competitor tools like Ahrefs Site Explorer to analyze the site’s pages with the most traffic and the keywords they are targeting. Once you identify these keywords, create better content around them to increase your chances of outranking your competitors.

Related: How to stand out from your competitors on Google Search

Analyze customer communications

Mine for additional keywords by digging through customer communications. Look for common questions from your customers and the terms they’re using to ask them.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter also can provide valuable audience insights. Pay keen attention to what customers are saying about your products and services to identify keywords to target.

Research related terms

Complete your keyword research by researching related terms. Enter a keyword on a search engine to see additional terms people might be using.

You’ve probably seen this when searching for something on Google — you notice a section with searches related to what you’re searching for as you scroll down the SERPs. These keywords can add to your bucket of target terms and phrases.

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Optimize content for search engines

Once you’re done with keyword research, it’s time to create content and optimize it for search engines.

The best SEO content provides valuable information on what your customers and prospects are looking for online.

People turn to search engines to look for high-quality, relevant and engaging content on a subject. To create valuable content, find unique ideas to address users’ questions. Then present them in a well-structured manner to ensure users and search engines can access them easily.

Research your audience’s needs

You’re trying to identify what your users want and need, which should be easy if you’ve already done the keyword research. You’ll want to be as specific as possible to narrow your field of competitors for the same search terms.

When you focus on a niche, it’s easier to create unique, detailed content that has a better chance of ranking higher in the SERPs for long-tail keywords.

Try to tackle the content from different angles and be as thorough as possible.

Research other ranking content

Creating content that can rank higher on SERPs means understanding what users are looking for and creating better content than what is already available on the internet. While keyword research helps you understand search intent, you can get additional insights by using the top-ranking pages as a proxy.

Take time to analyze what’s already ranking to wrap your head around the search intent.

When analyzing the top-ranking pages in your niche, pay attention to the content type, format and angle. The information you get will help you choose the best content type/format and find a unique way to present the content.

Create content for users

Here’s the heart of how to do SEO: creating the actual content.

Outline, draft and edit

Start by creating an outline. Include a general overview of your content headings, subheadings and format. Of course, the format will vary depending on the type of content.

Once your outline is ready, create the first draft of your content. You’re going for unique content that fully covers the topic and showcases your expertise in the niche. Find engaging sub-topics that even the top-ranking pages don’t address.

Here are ideas to help create unique content that your audience will find valuable:

• Expand on popular existing content with anecdotes and examples gleaned from your professional experience.
• Give your content a unique perspective. For instance, you might include quotes from your customers that support the ideas you’re covering.
• Gather original research and share your findings in a variety of formats (e.g., blog posts, videos, infographics).
• Compile the questions you get most often from your customers into an FAQ that you keep up-to-date.
• Create a photo gallery that shows your products/services in action, with keyword-optimized captions.

Next comes editing, where you review your content for factual and grammatical errors and readability issues. If you’re unsure what to look out for when editing your content, consider asking for feedback from a colleague or a friend.

Make your content SEO-friendly

Optimizing your website content helps both users and search engines. Basic SEO practices — such as crafting an effective SEO title, meta description and subheadings — tell users at a glance what they’ll find when they click your link in the SERPs. And these SEO elements give search engines the information they need to index and rank your site’s contents.

Write your SEO title, meta description and subheads

In most cases, visitors look at the page’s SEO title and meta description to determine whether they will click on a page in the SERPs.

• SEO title: Also called the HTML title tag, these are the words that look like the headline on the search result. Search engines give more emphasis on the early words in your SEO title, so consider putting your focus keyword at the beginning or near the start of the page title.
• Meta description: These are the words below the headline that describe what’s on the page. Like the SEO title, visitors see the first words in the meta description and will decide whether to click on the page based on the keywords they see.

Once they click the page, your subheadings and content formatting will influence how long they stay.

Use H1, H2 and H3 headings

Heading tags are like ranks of duty, with H1 being the most important, followed by H2 and so forth. The information on each tag relates to the main topic, although each subheading will be unique.

Headings provide a great way for users to understand the information on a page logically.

While headings alone don’t have a huge impact on SEO, they can help visitors find direct answers to a subject.

Here’s a simple breakdown to help understand what H1, H2 and H3 headings do:

1. H1: Includes the page’s target keyword(s) to help explain what it’s all about. This might be the headline on a blog page.
2. H2: Adds structure to the page, breaking up blocks of content and making it easy for visitors to understand what they’ll find in that section.
3. H3: Helps further break up the content to make it more scannable.

Though headings might not make or break your SEO efforts, they do help search engines understand what’s on the page and they enhance the user experience — keeping visitors on your site, which helps with SEO.

Optimize images and media

In addition to optimizing your written content, it’s important to make visual content like images and video search-friendly. There are many best practices for this type of optimization, but for the beginner just learning how to do SEO, start here:

• Select images that align to the story you’re telling. Remember, search engines crawl for relevant content, and that includes images.
• Use the correct file format. In most cases, you’ll want to use images in JPEG or PNG format. They are easily compressed and render well on most devices.
• Decrease image size. Use a free image compression tool to make images smaller so they load faster.
• Add image alt tags. Give your image a file name and “alt text,” including keywords if relevant, that accurately describes it. This also enhances accessibility.
• Include video transcripts. They make videos more accessible, help search engines understand what the video’s about, and provide another opportunity to include target keywords and links to related content on your site.

Taking these few steps can make a big difference for your on-page SEO efforts.

Keep updating your content

Since search engines aim to provide up-to-date and relevant information to users, make sure you keep your content fresh. Schedule a few hours each month to review your content for outdated material and update accordingly.

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Measuring SEO Performance

Creating an effective SEO strategy, keeping track of Google algorithm changes, and consistently adhering to SEO best practices is the best path to increasing your website’s search rankings.

And part of that process involves looking at what’s working and what’s not. That’s where Google Analytics and Google Search Console come into play.

Google Analytics

Setting up Google Analytics is a great way to analyze SEO results on your site. Among other factors, adding Google Analytics to your website can show you:

• the number of visits to a page
• how long visitors stay on your site
• how many of your visitors convert

Getting started with Google Analytics isn’t too complicated. You first need to create an account and add an Account Name to set it up. This can be your business name or a generic account name.

Once you set up your account, add a property (the website name and URL). After that, go to the data-sharing setting and select your options. Lastly, add the tracking code to your website to connect it to your new Google Analytics account.

Related: How to track user behavior with Google Analytics

Google Search Console

Google Search Console helps analyze your website’s SEO performance and how users find you on Google. In other words, this free service from Google will help you understand and monitor your site’s presence in Google search results.

The information you get helps identify opportunities and areas to work on to improve your position on SERPs.

Related: Using Google Analytics and Google Search Console to find out what’s bringing people to your website

Metrics to help measure SEO results

Tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console will provide a wealth of information about your website’s performance — so much info that it’s common for those just learning how to do SEO to get overwhelmed. When you’re just starting out, focus on a handful of key metrics.

Keyword performance in SERPs

Know where your target keywords currently rank on search results pages so you can make adjustments as necessary.

Organic traffic

Higher organic traffic indicates organic search visibility for your site — this is the goal. By focusing on organic traffic from sources such as search engines and social networks, you look at your website’s visibility for your target keywords.

Pages per session

Pages per session is an important user engagement metric that measures the average number of pages users visit before leaving your site. If users visit more pages on your site per session, your content is engaging and relevant to the visitors. It also indicates that your navigation is user-friendly.

Exit pages

What are the pages that make visitors lose interest in your site? This is another important metric to track, as it might mean that those pages need reworking.

Reasons that can increase the exit rate on your pages include:

1. Lack of clear layout and content structure
2. Not having clear internal links and clear calls-to-action that guide visitors to relevant pages
3. Not adding visuals for better engagement

Organic leads and sales

Lastly, the most important factor you can use to measure SEO success is by looking at whether your efforts have an impact on your bottom line. In other words, does your content help you

achieve your set goals?

Set up your goals in Google Analytics to gauge the effectiveness of your efforts.

This helps track your organic traffic and goals by landing pages. In other words, what percentage of users from an organic search convert?

If you’re satisfied with the information you get from the above reports, you’re doing just fine with SEO. However, if you’re not generating organic leads and sales, it’s time to rework your strategy or change your content structure.

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How to do SEO: Next steps

Search engine optimization ranks No. 1 among strategies to drive more organic traffic to your website. Understanding where and how to start is only the beginning. Once you feel comfortable with the basics, explore more technical SEO tactics and even consider hiring an expert to accelerate your growth.

Above all, remember that SEO is a long game that requires patience and continuous learning to yield consistent results.

When writing about tips for producing content, I think back to a time many years ago when I interviewed an Academy Award-winning screenplay writer. Paris Hilton was his neighbor and he lived in the heart of Hollywood. He had achieved extreme career success by creating screenplays that captivated audiences.

“How do you produce content that people actually want to watch,” I asked. “When you have a blank computer screen staring back at you, and you’re in the back of a noisy coffee shop, how do you put words to paper?”

The screenplay writer smiled and gave a pretty simple answer:

“Trust that you’re a valid audience. If you can please yourself, you have to trust that there are enough people out there who will be pleased as well.”

Even in business, this advice holds true. You have to trust that you are the expert in your industry to give valuable information that people want to read. Producing engaging content is a challenge for content writers, small business owners and anyone leveraging their blog to attract prospective readers.ma

To help you create meaningful content, we asked marketing leaders and small business owners for their best content creation tips.

Related: 12 ways to improve your content marketing

11 tips for producing content for your target audience

From leveraging Google to relying on data, here are several strategies that may help you produce valuable content for your website.

1. Google is your best friend
2. Search Pinterest to find new topic ideas
3. Monitor how your content impacts conversions
4. Build up your top performers
5. Interview your target audience
6. Use search listening tools
7. Focus on customer pain points using “AIDA”
8. Pick keywords aligning with a user search intent
9. Be an industry resource
10. Visit spaces where your customers ask questions
11. Analyze content gaps and social media

Below, you’ll have an opportunity to read through advice from key business leaders and see why many of these tips for producing content are so successful.

1. Google is your best friend

All good content starts with some keyword research. But great content starts with “key question” research.

As you examine your target, focus on what questions they have about your product, service or category. A great tool to find out what those questions are is good ol’ Google.

Type in a keyword, scroll down the search results until you get to “People also searched for.” Here you will find great questions that people are turning to Google for answers.

You can be their answer. Go build great content that answers these questions and you will be well on your way to being an authority on topics you know that interests your target.

Eric Rutin, Easy Marketing Lessons

Related: How to do SEO keyword research to drive traffic to your website

2. Search Pinterest to find new topic ideas

A large swath of my audience is on Pinterest, so I utilize the auto-fill in the search tool in Pinterest to find more interesting long-tail keywords — [this works] for content that I may not have considered before utilizing more traditional keyword search platforms, such as Ahrefs.

Not only will this content perform well on Pinterest, but I know that there is an audience interested in this topic. And, I can increase the chance that they will click through to other interesting content on my website.

Kristine Thorndyke, Test Prep Nerds

Related: The entrepreneurs’ guide to Pinterest marketing

3. Monitor how your content impacts conversions

Yes, you should be measuring content performance by looking at metrics like time on page, bounce rate, and more. But if you’re not monitoring which pieces of content are actually driving conversions, then you won’t know what content is meeting your audience’s needs.

To do this, start by enabling ecommerce tracking in Google Analytics or setting up a goal based on what you want your audience to do. Then, use the Assisted Conversions report to see which types of content are moving the needle.

Content is almost always more top-of-the-funnel than bottom. By using the Assisted Conversions report you can see which pieces are contributing throughout the user journey and scale from there.

Sylvia Kang, Mira

4. Build up your top performers

My best tip for producing content that readers will actually enjoy is to see what’s currently ranking and write something better. If long-form content (such as ultimate guides) is ranking for your target keyword, then create an ultimate guide –– but make it stand out.

Use what is already performing well as a baseline, then add another layer of value. This could be something like adding a free downloadable PDF guide to complement the blog post.

Sophia Orlando, Markitors

5. Interview your target audience

The best way to produce content that meets your audience’s needs is to interview your existing customers. Speak to them and find out the challenges they are facing. Discover the hot topic in their industry that everyone is talking about. Once you know what these topics are, you can produce content directly addressing your audience’s questions.

Daniel Lee, Strategyst

6. Use search listening tools

To produce content that meets your target audience’s needs, don’t just take your best guess. To get to grips with what your audience really wants to read, use search listening tools like Answer The Public.

Answer The Public listens to autocomplete data from search engines like Google, then generates a list of audience questions, prepositions and comparisons.

Just by running one or two words through the platform’s tool, you can access and draw from these insights to create content that meets your target audience’s needs. When I’m hitting writer’s block and struggling with what content to plan next, search listening tools always get me back on track and provide a boatload of potential content ideas.

Aaron Gray, NO-BS Marketplace

7. Focus on customer pain points using “AIDA”

Customers have multiple needs. Needs are categorized often as “must” and “nice to have” criteria. But ultimately, there is always one need that creates pain. This is the one need to tackle within your content.

How do you do this? With the proven AIDA model,  an acronym for:

• Attention
• Interest
• Desire
• Action

First, get the attention of the customer by demonstrating you understand their needs and have a good solution.

Second, spark interest with details on your solution and show the user exactly how to solve their problem.

Third, create desire by showing the user how much easier their life is once they purchase your solution. Create the “to-be” state of the customer.

And last, get the user to act through a demo, free call, download or a purchase.

Stephan Wenger, B2B Marketing World

8. Pick keywords aligning with a user search intent

Before crafting your content, first categorize its ideal reader into one of three user search intent categories:

• Informational searchers
• Commercial searchers
• Transactional searchers

Informational searchers are the most passive and broad — [they hunt] online across multiple page-one search engine results pages (SERPs) to better understand a topic.

Commercial searchers go next and [consist of users] searching for the best solution to their questions or problems — not just information.

Finally, transactional searchers are folks who go online specifically to buy something right now.

Once you’ve identified where your reader sits in these three categories, you can scaffold your target keywords accordingly — [aim] to capture their interest and meet their needs in your content. In doing so, you’ve identified the top, middle and bottom funnels. [This] helps ensure that users will find what they need when interacting with your content.

Morgan Taylor, Sourcery

9. Be an industry resource

We see the importance of producing quality content when building our marketing plan, so we focus on addressing our audience’s search intent. You can attract users to your website, but if you’re not answering their questions or filling their needs, you’ll find that they quickly navigate away from the page.

Find relevant keywords and add value to the conversation. Position your business as a resource in your industry.

Blake Murphey, American Pipeline Solutions

10. Visit spaces where your customers ask questions

[Find] the spaces where your ideal customers spend time. A great option is to join or browse Facebook groups that are relevant to your niche. What questions are the people in those groups asking? Are there any recurring topics?

Quora is another platform that can better help you get into the mind of your target audience.

Another place to find inspiration is to talk to your customer service team. What questions do they receive the most from customers or potential customers? Does there appear to be a disconnect anywhere between information available on the website and the questions they hear the most?

Sara Bodner, Conklin Media

11. Analyze content gaps and social media

Perform a content gap analysis. This helps you find topics and keywords that people are searching for or talking about — [especially when] there isn’t much existing content about it.

Doing this would give you ideas for content that meets the needs of your target audience [that isn’t] currently being addressed. Reading social media comments and questions, and seeing what’s trending on social media, also helps in generating content ideas that meet the needs of the target audience.

Ben Rollins, Axon Optics

Make content that connects with your readers

The tips for producing content above will better equip you at connecting with prospective customers.

A perfect piece of content is one that speaks to the needs of your customers.

If every reader can find value in what you’ve created, then you know you’re ready to hit the “publish” button and share with your stakeholders and followers.

Use these content creation tips as a guide when creating your next piece of content and see how it impacts your small business.

Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published.

Whatever your niche or sector, email marketing is a promotional medium that will generate amazing results — if you do it right. Harness that power for holiday email marketing and you stand to increase brand awareness, grow your audience and boost your bottom line, big time.

Studies show that a third of consumers check their personal email accounts two to five times a day. And it’s a top way to receive updates from brands.

When we say holiday email marketing, we’re not just talking about Christmas or Thanksgiving. There are countless annual holidays and celebratory seasons out there. By tapping into the right ones, you can transform a promotional email into an invaluable profit-generating tool for your business.

Related: Holiday marketing checklist 

Guide to holiday email marketing

We’re going to show you how to create a holiday email marketing strategy for your business from start to finish — a definitive guide that you can use for maseasonal success all year round.

Without further ado, let’s get started.

A few steps to get started with holiday email marketing

Whether your holiday email efforts are centered on Hanukkah, Christmas or Groundhog Day, to enjoy maximum promotional success, you need to start planning early.

Get together with your colleagues or team to decide on the holidays you feel will work best for your business and mark them in a dedicated content planner as early as possible. This will give you ample time to prepare, plan, create and deliver.

But, before you start creating content, the first thing you need to do is get under the skin of your customers.

Know your audience

If you don’t know who you’re aiming your holiday email marketing efforts at, it’s unlikely you’ll see any return on investment (ROI). That said, you should build a holiday-specific buyer persona so that your marketing communications will resonate with your audience.

By building a solid customer profile or persona, you’ll be able to personalize your emails to offer a level of personal value to all of your recipients, based on their preferences and needs.

Understand segmentation

Armed with your buyer persona (or personas), you should categorize your audience into different segments to keep track of who’s buying what and how often they’re coming back for more. That way your messages are more intentional and better equipped at showing customers what they’re actually interested in.

To get started, make sure to prep your holiday email list in the following steps:

1. Clean up your email subscriber list

Segment your list to determine which subscribers haven’t engaged with your content within the last 90 days and beyond. Then, send a follow-up email (or re-engagement campaign) to that group to see if they’re still interested in receiving emails from your brand. Send at least three re-engagement messages to this segment of the list, removing anyone who did click to stay on the list from the segment.

Don’t be afraid to remove the folks that aren’t interested, as this opens up an opportunity for you to add new (more engaged) subscribers later on.

2. Get new subscribers

Start by organizing your current subscribers in one place, then test your integrations and forms to ensure all is functioning properly. It’s also a good idea to encourage replies from subscribers (or directly ask them to be whitelisted) so you can improve message deliverability.

Once everything checks out, it’s time to start adding to your list. A few ways you can source out new subscribers could include:

• Re-sharing your opt-in on social media
• Pairing up with relevant businesses on a collaboration (buyer’s guides work well for this)
• Asking for referrals from current subscribers (try attaching a special offer or gift as an incentive)

Word of mouth goes a long way here. So make sure you look for ways to strengthen your relationship with current subscribers whenever possible.

3. Build new email segments

Now that your existing email lists are up to date, you can segment your audience into new sub-lists, such as:

• Repeat customers
• Frequent buyers
• New subscribers
• Special offer redeemers and more

Doing this can enhance the personalization of your content for maximum results.

4. Update and fine-tune your automations

Double-check all of your automated messages and ensure they are current and functional. You don’t want to miss out on additional holiday sales because of a broken link or an incorrect promotion date.

Additionally, you’ll want to build holiday emails that are relevant to your product categories. You can do this with both cross-sell and upsell messages, but note that they have different agendas. A cross-sell message will suggest similar items to customers, while an upsell shows them additional accessories to pair with their purchase.

Having a good batch of upsell and cross-sell messages will help customers fill their carts with products they know and love most — especially as they shop for stocking stuffers and holiday gift bags.

5. Superpower your transactional messages

Your transactional messages are also areas you can maximize holiday sales during the holidays. These could include promotional communications within your shipping and delivery confirmations, or even abandoned cart emails. You might even include reminders on things like:

• Shipping deadlines
• Special offers
• Last chance notifications

Pro tip: Mark these types of event dates on a calendar ahead of the holidays, so you can easily swap in and update graphics when needed.

Consider your email subject lines

If you’re going to send out a holiday email, you need to get your subject lines right. It’s the headline that will make people click though, after all.

Tip: Always aim to make your email subject lines short, sweet and relevant.

Here are a couple of our favorites from Black Friday for your reference:

• “Let’s sweeten the Black Friday Deals with …”
• “Are you taking time for YOU this Black Friday?”

Once you’ve taken the time to plan, get to know your audience and create effective email subject lines, it’s time to start rolling out your strategy.

Know when to send your emails

Now that you have your email subject lines ready, it’s time to start planning when you should send out your holiday emails. Most businesses will already have a plan for the major US holidays like Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. But don’t forget to include these prime shopping dates for maximum leverage:

Black Friday: November 25, 2022

Small Business Saturday: November 26th, 2022

Cyber Monday: November 28th, 2022

Giving Tuesday: November 29th, 2022

You’ll also want to time out your email subscriber list regularly before the holiday season. Try aiming for at least once a month, and not more often than twice a week (unless that’s what they signed up for).

To help you plan ahead for the peak holiday months, you can refer to the monthly breakdown below to see what you’ll need to prepare for.

August-September

This is when you’ll want to start planning all the content for the months ahead. Think about traditional and cyber holidays that make the most sense to your business. Then, prepare all your graphics, email copy and promotions around that.

October

Early October might be too soon to push out your Christmas marketing campaigns, but a recent report by Statista shows that 43% of consumers start planning their holiday shopping before the end of this month. Your best bet is to start sending out Christmas emails right after Halloween is over, as many consumers are looking to get their shopping done early.

November

This is a big month for shopping deals, considering both Black Friday and Cyber Monday fall into this timeframe. You’ll want to prepare promotions for this month well in advance and start building up the hype from the end of October to the end of November.

Additionally, you’ll want to use the first two weeks of this month to send out emails in anticipation of Christmas.

December

As it gets closer to Christmas, you’ll start to notice click-through traffic slowly winding down. The beginning of the month will still be pretty strong, as last minute holiday shoppers wrap up their final purchases for th. December 1 and December 2 have a +25% increase vs. the December average, so try planning your emails around then.

January

You’ll want to continue sending out targeted emails in January since previous years have shown that the open ratetends to be higher than in December.  And since New Year’s tends to focus more on products that encourage self-improvement, you’ll want to tailor your emails to highlight how your newest products and services can benefit your audience in an enriching way.

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Building your holiday email marketing strategy

When creating content for your holiday email marketing strategy, you should always try to speak to your customers on a personal level, remaining conversational while designing your emails in such a way that makes your intent clear and concise.

These tips will help you create promotional email content that works for any holiday or occasion.

Create a holiday-themed design

When it comes to holiday email marketing, a digestible design coupled with striking themed imagery will excite and inspire your customers. And that’s likely to result in action — people buying stuff from you.

Plus, if you place your discount codes, deals or offers near the top of your holiday email, you’re more likely to encourage click-throughs and increase sales.

Editor’s note: Need help creating attention-grabbing images for your holiday emails? GoDaddy Studio has a wide selection of easy-to-use templates, graphics and fonts you can piece together in minutes — without any experience necessary.

Related: Email design 101 — How to create a beautiful email

Share holiday gift guides, deals and teaser emails

When you’re creating a holiday marketing email strategy, it’s important to provide a unique level of value while offering exclusivity and, of course, creating urgency — for example, “Quick, buy now while you still can!”

With this in mind, when crafting a holiday email, employing these additional tactics to encourage your subscribers to buy your products or services will yield positive results:

• Create a holiday gift guide with tips, advice and consultancy on what’s best to buy this holiday season.
• Send out holiday teaser emails leading up to the holiday in question, getting your prospects excited by promising to deliver exciting seasonal content, news, and offers.
• Offer exclusive holiday-based deals, offers and discount codes. Encourage your customers to take action by placing a redemption time limit on the offers you provide.
• Send last-minute emails offering free shipping or reminding your subscribers of their deal, offer or discount redemption deadlines.
• Offer one-click or instant purchasing options.
• Launch a holiday-themed competition, encouraging your email recipients to enter by replying to your email or sharing a piece of content via social media. Brand awareness and engagement in one neat promotional package.
• Go the traditional route by designing and sending out an eye-grabbing custom graphic or image to use as a greeting card.

Be aware: While encouraging action and creating urgency works, don’t over do it.

Putting too much pressure on potential prospects to subscribe to your list or buy your products could hurt your brand reputation.

Offer deals and incentives and implement redemption time limits, but whatever you do, be natural and conversational when speaking to your customers rather than forcing their hands toward the shopping carts. Essentially, you should create excitement and leave the hard sales pitch at the door.

Produce a holiday marketing video

As humans, we’re visual creatures. In fact, 54% of today’s consumers want to see more video content from the brands they subscribe to or follow.

By creating a fun, inspirational or topical holiday-themed marketing video, not only are you likely to boost your brand awareness, but you’ll have a powerful asset to share in your promotional emails.

Campaign ideas

Need help drafting up extra content for your holiday email campaigns? Here are some ideas to help inspire you:

Thank you campaign

Send out a thank you email to your subscribers on Thanksgiving day to let them know you value them as a loyal customer. Towards the end of the email, let them know about the massive sale you have coming out. Something like, “P.S. tomorrow will be our biggest sale in company history, so make sure to keep an eye on your inbox.”

Pre-sale campaign

This campaign should be exclusive and sent only to active users that open your messages and make purchases regularly. You can offer them a special coupon code or promotional deal to entice them, then add a countdown timer that signifies it’s only for a limited time. This could work for a one-day Thanksgiving event or a few days prior to Black Friday.

Free-shipping campaign

These work best alongside your Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals and are a no-brainer for customers looking to score big savings. However, you’ll need to ensure you’re not losing any profits on your end. Calculate your shipping costs first, then offer a free shipping coupon for orders over a certain value.

Gift-based campaign

Nudge your customers to purchase more by offering a bonus of a gift after they spend over a certain threshold. Gift ideas could include a free backpack, t-shirt or other branded merchandise. Set a limit to the quantity you’ll have in stock (think the first 200 customers) and tease about it in earlier emails. You can also send follow-up emails to notify subscribers when your gift stock is running low.

Raffle or giveaway campaign

Offering a prize or giveaway also helps encourage your customers to shop for more in hopes of winning big for themselves. Cash incentives are the most popular choice to go with, but there are other ways to motivate your subscribers to add a little more to their cart. Some examples could include:

• Free shipping for a year
• A gift card to another store
• Free subscriptions to your software service

Get creative and think of a prize so compelling you’ll have customers buying from you solely to have a chance at winning.

Sequence-based campaign

If you like the idea of a countdown timer, you can set up deals that span from Black Friday to Cyber Monday as separate daily events. This means you’ll have a specific category of merchandise that goes on sale for each of those days, and for a limited amount of time. When the timer runs out, those sales will no longer be available — creating a sense of FOMO for your subscribers. Typically, you’ll notice a spike in sales just before the timer is up.

Partnering business campaigns

Trying to think outside of the box? Try partnering with a non-competitive business that closely relates to what you’re selling. You can do this to promote your business to their email subscribers and do the same for them as well.

For example, if you sell hiking backpacks, you can partner with any retailer that sells tents, camping knives or water filters as a way to complete a set.

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Holiday email marketing optimization and retargeting

With your timing, content, deals, design, offers and visuals firmly in place, now’s the time to optimize your holiday marketing email efforts while thinking about retargeting subscribers to enjoy maximum value from your campaign. Here are four ways to do that.

Set up referral rewards

Reward repeat buyers or first-time holiday purchasers by sending a follow-up email offering an exclusive referral reward.

The reward could come in the form of:

• A discount code
• Two-for-one offer
• First dibs on brand-new products
• Free shipping for a month

By prompting existing holiday customers to encourage their friends or relatives to subscribe to your email list, you’ll have a bigger, more engaged audience to target when the next holiday rolls around. A real win-win.

Deliver post-holiday or follow-up emails

Follow-up or retargeting emails work well when delivered near the end or shortly after your holiday marketing campaign.

When it comes to following up with a holiday marketing email recipient, there are several approaches you can take.

1. Send a reminder to folks with an incomplete transaction

 If a promotional email recipient has clicked through to a purchase page but for some reason, decided to stop their transaction, it’s possible to retarget them with a cart abandonment email.

Cart abandonment emails allow you to re-engage your subscribers with some sweet holiday messaging while reminding them of their previous purchasing activities.

2. Utilize a template for quick turnaround

If sent in a timely fashion, cart abandonment emails earn solid results. If you have a template up your sleeve that you can edit according to campaign or occasion, sending out these types of emails will take minimal effort.

3. Make it personal with a sweet deal

It’s also possible to send follow-up or retargeting emails with personalized holiday gift suggestions or, as mentioned, free shipping or deals with expiration dates. These approaches boost engagement while creating a sense of urgency.

Whatever approach you decide to take when following up with a promotional email, it’s important to include a clear-cut call-to-action to guide your customers to the next stage of the sales process — whether it’s a product page or an instant purchase shopping cart.

But, whatever you do, make sure you avoid costly mistakes like:

• Not ending every page with a call to action. 
• Not using CTAs to guide your website sales funnel.
• Not having a call-to-action above the fold.
• Using too many calls to action.
• Using weak language in your CTAs.
• Not thinking about the design of the CTA.
• Not testing your calls to action.
• Thinking that calls-to-action don’t matter.

Tip: When creating calls to action for your promotional emails, keep it simple! Even adding a linked phrase like “Shop Now” can do the trick.

Also, you should make your links noticeable. Most clicked links have slightly larger text or are in all caps, with a different color than the rest of the text surrounding them. Red often works well.

Try to stick to just one link per email to keep your promotion simple and clutter-free.

You also can try using a linked image. Visuals immediately catch the eye and you can use them to incite a call to action. The example below features a clickable image that yielded the lion’s share of the clicks:

Embrace email automation

Email automation is a process that makes it possible to send time or action-triggered emails to your subscribers with relevant content.

With automation, it’s possible to create and schedule emails to be sent to different segments of your subscriber base at times when they’re most likely to be engaged.

Essentially, you can set everything up and monitor your success with minimal intervention.

For a seamless, time-saving email retargeting experience, there’s no denying that email automation is your best option.

This practical guide will help you get started, saving you time and money in equal measures.

Don’t forget holiday email mobile optimization

Statistics from Hubspot suggest that a majority of email views are now opened more on mobile than desktop. And considering that 1 in 5 email campaigns are not optimized for mobile devices, your business has an opportunity to boost extra views — simply by using mobile-friendly design tactics for holiday email marketing campaigns.

Some design tactics you can consider, include:

• A clean and simplified layout: Highlight important features at the top and use bullet points to quickly get your point across.
• Quick and relevant buttons: Double-check that all links are functioning the way you intended. No one likes clicking on a link that takes too long to load, doesn’t work or reroutes to something irrelevant.
• Easy link placements: Avoid placing product links (especially with images) too close to each other or making them too small for consumers to quickly click on.
• Contrast between text and background color: A simple black text on a plain white background is one color combo that’s typically easy to read.

Again, mobile optimization can help boost your holiday promotional emails in a way that other competitors might be ignoring. You’ll want to offer a seamless level of user experience (UX) and ensure everything looks great on screen. Otherwise, your customers will put them in the virtual trash bin, posthaste.

With testing, time and development, you can ensure that all of your emails work perfectly on mobile devices. But the most effective solution is to use an email marketing tool like GoDaddy Email Marketing that will optimize your designs automatically.

Doing so will allow you to preview them across devices before sending them to your recipients, resulting in time and money well spent.

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Research, track and refine your holiday email efforts

Sector or niche aside, your marketing success as a business owner will depend on your ability to test and refine your activities for future holiday campaign success.

Testing your holiday emails boils down to good common sense.

In terms of checking and testing your emails before sending them, you might catch typos, broken links or discover a better way to lay out a module. And by measuring the success of your emails after your campaign, you’ll be able to identify what works well — in addition to areas that require improvement.

If you don’t have a marketing team to test your emails, you should send a test to yourself or a trusted friend. It really does help to see your newsletter as it appears in your readers’ inboxes.

Plus, if you’re starting an automated email drip campaign , or continuing one, it’s important to ensure your campaign is functioning optimally.

Here are two tried and tested strategies to ensure your holiday email efforts work for you time and time again.

Benchmark your results

By using email campaign data to your advantage, you’ll be able to benchmark your holiday email marketing efforts, empowering you to make vital improvements during the next seasonal period.

The best way to benchmark  your campaign efforts is by analyzing metrics, such as:

• Open rates
• Click-through rates
• Conversion rates

These metrics are all based on the performance of individual emails, but you can monitor them through platforms like Google Analytics or your email marketing platform’s built-in performance data. Make sure to note any discoveries you come across and use them to understand your strengths and weaknesses.

By drilling down into your performance data, you’ll be able to decide the best and worst times to send emails. You’ll also have a better understanding of the types of content or offers that work best for your business, plus figure out which elements of your holiday marketing efforts need improvement. You can then use all this information to take action where necessary.

If you measure, track and benchmark your efforts on a continual basis, you’ll keep evolving and eventually increase your holiday marketing sales year after year in the process.

Failing to do so will only dilute your promotional email efforts.

Peek at your competitors

The best thing about holiday email marketing is the fact that the holidays (in their various forms) happen every year. This offers a fresh opportunity to dazzle, amaze and engage your audience every 12 months.

One of the best ways to get inspiration for your holiday marketing efforts is to look at what your competitors are doing.

Follow them on social media and sign up for their email lists to gather as much intel as possible.

Peeking at the competition is great because not only can you utilize the best parts of their campaigns to your advantage, but you can also spot content gaps to exploit. Try placing your own spin on their ideas and delivering them to your customers in a way that’s unique to your brand.

For example, if your competitor is doing a “12 offers of Christmas” campaign — sending out a different deal each day in the lead-up to the big day — you could evolve this idea by delivering an email that includes a “12 days of Christmasadvent calendar.” This could include a graphic that your customers can open for exclusive deals and content.

With holiday emails, the sky really is the limit. But it certainly doesn’t hurt to look at what your competitors are doing with their holiday email marketing activities.

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Conclusion and next steps

There’s no doubt about it. For businesses of all shapes and sizes, the holidays offer a prime opportunity for increasing your sales, boosting brand awareness and growing your audience.

By planning early on and delivering content that will inspire and engage your audience in equal measures, you stand to enjoy great success with your holiday email marketing campaigns.

“Email has an ability many channels don’t: creating valuable, personal touches — at scale.” —David Newman, author of “Do It! Marketing”

As a quick recap, here is a rundown of the best general practices for holiday email marketing:

Be clear and direct

Always have a clear goal for every promotional email you send to make your communications concise and impactful. And, if you’re looking to attract new subscribers, make sure your opt-in information is easy to read. You’ll want to let prospective subscribers know what you intend to do with their contact details.

Stay recent and engaged

When dealing with your email marketing lists, make sure you remove any subscribers who are inactive or unresponsive. This will give you the space to focus your efforts on new customers or existing recipients who are likely to engage.

Exert no pressure

Adding a sense of urgency to your holiday emails with deal and discount code expiry messaging is effective. But, don’t over-pressure your holiday prospects — as it could damage your brand reputation. Make sure your communications are as natural as possible, leaving the hard sales pitch at the door.

Test your emails

Measuring, tracking and testing your emails is essential to your ongoing holiday marketing success. Testing your emails before you send them will ensure you capture any typos or formatting issues across devices.

And, by drilling down into your performance data, you’ll be able to see what works and what doesn’t. This will empower you to make improvements for future campaigns.

Care for your customers

Make sure you reward loyal subscribers with exclusive content and incentives and always remember to offer a unique level of value with every single piece of content you send.

Whether it’s a greetings card, gift guide or an exclusive discount code, you should always strive to keep your holiday email recipients coming back for more.

This article includes content originally published on the GoDaddy blog by the following authors: Christina Berry, Emma Wilhelm, Macdara Bracken and Mira Lynn.

While you are more likely to target local clients when running a small business, it does not mean that you cannot make use of digital marketing strategies. All you need to do is know which are the right techniques for you.

As such, this article will look at some of the best places you can focus your digital marketing so you can make the most out of these new strategies.

Web Page

The first thing any business needs to do in the current era is set up a web page. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t using eCommerce as part of your business strategy. Your customers are going to be looking for a web page when searching for your service, so you had better make sure that your site is up and running.

Your company website should include all the information a potential customer could possibly need to know about your services. As a small business, you may also find it beneficial to include a short story about how you set up your company and why. People use small businesses because they prefer a more personal touch. Focus on this aspect in your marketing and you will find it much easier to make a sale.

SEO

Now that you have a website, you need to work out how you are going to direct people’s attention toward it. All your current business correspondence should include a link to your website, such as your business cards and company emails. However, these are given to people who are already aware of your existence. Your main focus should be on gaining the attention of new potential customers, and you can do so with SEO.

Search engine optimization is a strategy for building up a strong web presence so that your website climbs up the google rankings. You can do this by using keyword optimization, backlinks, or by using targeted ads on specific web pages. SEO is now one of the most popular digital marketing strategies, so make sure you are using it to full effect to outrank your competitors.

Social Media

Using social media is a no-brainer when it comes to digital marketing. Unfortunately, it takes a very proficient person to navigate this space correctly.

Larger businesses will have teams of individuals who have been trained in digital marketing by professional teaching bodies. It is important that you and your employees sign up for digital marketing courses to help boost your strategy. You should lead by example. Ensure that you maintain a strong presence when you can spare a minute to answer any potential questions your employees or customers may have. There can be no substitution for maintaining strong customer relations when it comes to marketing, and this remains true in the digital age.

Targeted Emails

A common problem for businesses in the digital marketing age is that the majority of the ad space is dominated by the same names. What’s more, these companies can come from anywhere in the world. It can be incredibly difficult for a customer to cut through the digital noise, which is why a smaller business can turn this situation to its advantage.

As you move forward, you will start to receive a steady flow of the same customers. These individuals will be responsible for keeping your company afloat, so try to include them in as many upcoming sales or strategies as possible. You should have collected their email addresses during your regular interactions, so create a list for your targeted emails. These messages can place these customers at the front of the queue whenever they require your services again, and it ensures that these clients stay loyal to your brand.

Again, digital marketing is all about creating a rapport with your customers, so make sure you target them with emails whenever possible.

Influencers

Digital influencing is a new concept in advertising, but it can be crucial for a small business. Influencers are always on the lookout for new and innovative ideas to grow their reputation. Unfortunately, popular businesses cannot fulfil this goal.

A smaller business can give them more credibility as an influencer, and these professionals can use their status to push your product to their audience. If you feel that your product or service is ripe for a younger market, it may prove beneficial to create an alliance with a specific influencer.

Summary

As you can see, small businesses need to be more tactical with their digital marketing. However, being a small company can always work in your favour, so make sure you put this fact front and centre when marketing yourself in the digital space.

Although digital marketing offers numerous benefits, many businesses are unaware that there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about it. As a result, they spend their time and resources on online marketing without reaping the desired benefits.

Here are common mistakes that could hinder a successful digital marketing campaign and how to avoid them.

1. Running Without a Clear Marketing Strategy

Some businesses run their digital marketing campaigns without a defined plan for connecting and engaging with their target audience; this is one of the worst mistakes to make. Your campaigns will lack focus if you don’t set goals from the onset and articulate what you will do to achieve them within specific time frames. Even if you achieve significant feats in your digital marketing without a strategy, you wouldn’t have documented details of how you obtained such an outcome. Therefore, it will be difficult to replicate that success in your future marketing campaigns or apply it to other aspects of your business. And you’ll be unable to improve upon your previous success to achieve better results in your subsequent digital marketing campaigns.

So, document your digital marketing strategy and define your goals and the expected timeframes for achieving them. Also, define your target audience to avoid marketing your products or services to people who don’t need them and are unlikely to patronize you.

Map out all the activities that will enable you to achieve your marketing goals. This will make it easier for you to identify any strategy or activity that is not working and make the necessary adjustments for your desired outcome.

2. Having a Website Without a Blog

Digital marketing is not just about reaching your target market; you have to position yourself for your ideal customers to find you. One effective way to do this is by creating a blog.

Blogs drive a significant amount of organic traffic to websites. When you publish valuable blog content, you establish a reputation as a trusted industry leader while marketing your brand to your target audience. Furthermore, as you publish more blog posts, Google will index them and show them in search results. So, you should publish blog posts that rank high on search engine result pages (SERPs).

Ensure you follow best SEO practices when developing content, such as using alt texts for your images, internal links, compelling titles, and keywords. Also, your website’s domain name should be SEO-friendly so that it easily tells potential visitors what your site is about and the kinds of products or services you offer. You may want to change your domain name if you’re offering new solutions or if you have a new audience.

A domain appraisal is crucial to getting the most suitable domain for your website. If you’re considering selling your existing domain or buying a new one, you can learn more about domain appraisals here: https://saw.com/appraisals/.

3. Spending Too Much on Paid Ads

Don’t just dive into pay-per-click (PPC) marketing without careful consideration. PPC marketing can be highly rewarding and can give you your desired reach, website traffic, and conversions. However, compared to other online marketing campaigns, PPC ads are quite expensive. And only a small percentage of website visitors that arrive through PPC traffic eventually follow the conversion to the checkout portal. Besides, some internet users don’t trust paid ads as much as known bloggers or industry leaders.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you should abandon the idea of PPC marketing; you shouldn’t rely solely on it. Combine your PPC marketing with alternatives such as email marketing and social media marketing.

Before investing in PPC marketing, research your target audience thoroughly and segment them into groups based on age, geographic location, income, interests, and education level. Also, try out several campaigns with different audience segments and ad formats to determine which one provides the most favorable outcome.

You don’t have to spend too much of your marketing budget at this phase. Your budget should be just enough to give you credible results from which you can draw conclusions for your campaigns. When you launch a PPC marketing campaign, monitor its performance closely and be prepared to adjust the price on the go.

4. Not Leveraging Automation

Digital marketing campaigns require a significant amount of time. You can take advantage of software technologies to help automate several processes, such as email marketing, social media management, market research, and ad campaigns. This will give your team members more time for other tasks that require their expertise.

What are the things every small business should automate? We asked successful entrepreneurs and small business owners to share their best insights on how they best automate their business-related repetitive tasks From automating appointment schedulers to email marketing, you’ll find several suggestions that may help you decide on ways small business automation can streamline your business.

Here are 10 things every small business should automate:

1. Appointment scheduler.
2. Customer relationship management (CRM) system.
3. Social media.
4. Applicant Tracking System (ATS) recruiting.
5. Customer service.
6. Daily reporting.
7. Review monitoring.
8. Supply chain management.
9. Net Promoter Score (NPS) feedback.
10. Email marketing.

10 things every small business should automate

We’ve interviewed 10 business owners to help you find the automation processes that could help reduce the operational workload for your human resources significantly. Ready to automate those finicky business processes? Let’s dive deeper into each one below.

1. Appointment scheduler

Small business owners should automate their appointment scheduling using a calendar integration tool. Tools like Calendly or Picktime are low to no-cost options. Using appointment scheduling apps can decrease the need to speak to every client that reaches out to you. It can also eliminate hiring an additional employee to manage appointment setting workflow.

Small business owners can also gain valuable insights by adding a questionnaire to the scheduler. You can find out what the client needs assistance with that can help you prepare for your meeting. You can also garner helpful information like email addresses, telephone numbers and knowledge of how they found out about your business.

Annette Harris, Harris Financial Coaching

2. Customer relationship management (CRM) system

One thing every small business should automate is its CRM system. This will help keep track of all customer interactions and can help improve customer service. Automating your CRM can help you generate and streamline leads and sales reports.

Additionally, it can help you keep track of customer loyalty programs, invoicing and customer satisfaction scores. All of these benefits can help improve your bottom line. I suggest taking a look at some of the CRM software options on the market and choosing one that will work best for your business. There are many CRM software programs out there, so make sure to do your research before making a decision. Automating your CRM system can save you a lot of time and money in the long run, so it is worth considering for your small business.

Joey Sasson, Moving APT

3. Social media

If there is one thing that every business needs to automate, it is posting on every social media platform. For example, [if you’re] posting on one platform (such as Instagram), your post also needs to automatically [publish] on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on. Social media marketing is such a crucial part of a small business’s success. And there’s nothing more important than reaching as many audiences as possible. Automating this part of social media will go a long way for small businesses.

Sean Lau, LivingOutLau

4. Applicant tracking system (ATS) recruiting

Automating ATS recruiting helps provide small businesses with more real, qualified and motivated candidates — crucial in a tight job market. ATS recruiting automation platforms are faster, usually more responsive and way more cost-effective (not to mention time-saving). When small businesses automate ATS recruiting, they can recruit new team members and still have the time and money to develop other strategic areas once the process is on ‘autopilot.’

Ricardo von Groll, Talentify

5. Customer service

With less access to resources […]’, small businesses need to manage the trick of being both creative yet consistent in their approach to customer support.

[blockquote] After all, the success of any business depends on its customers and their willingness to make repeat purchases.

By automating your customer support process, it allows you to treat customers the way you would if you had more time. This sounds counter-intuitive, but customers are often frustrated by hard-to-find contact links and slow responses to their inquiries.

By being able to respond to queries immediately, you can ensure your customers remain happy, retain them and increase their lifetime value. Just make sure the responses are accurate, full and [on-brand]. Customer support automation software can also give you a great overview of recurring customer concerns, alongside their wants and needs. This provides insights that may help you improve your product, service and overall strategy.

Andy Way, PartyLite

6. Daily reporting

If your business relies upon digital channels to generate revenue and sales, [you should] automate your daily reporting so that you’re pulling in data from different online sources. This could be a combination of:

• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console
• Google Ads
• Facebook Ads

Use Google Data Studio to combine the data and automatically email you a report every morning — or every Monday morning if you find it too distracting. Having visibility of your performance and data in a single view is paramount to making sound decisions.

Shoaib Mughal, Marketix

7. Review monitoring

Staying on top of customer reviews is not a [easy] piece of cake — especially if you’re listed on a lot of platforms without great control. Unhappy customers turn to public platforms when they feel stuck, which [opens an] opportunity [for you] to spot problems, look for the root cause and fix them.

The faster you get to those reviews, the better your chance of getting them removed.

And positive reviews are an incredible opportunity to engage happy customers, as well as your team. Some companies even share their positive reviews on social media to drive engagement in their communities.

In both cases, time is of the essence. But nobody has time to go and check each platform manually every day. There are plenty of review monitoring and automation tools and most are very affordable – reviewflowz is a free option if you’re using Slack.

Axel Lavergne, Reviewflowz

8. Supply chain management

Businesses must surely automate their supply chain management system. This is one of the best ways to handle business operations. Such a system would provide scope in easing off demand and supply checks — ensuring your inventory is well prepared to meet the requirements.

Having a real-time system automatically providing when to order, how much to order, and maintaining a good lead time schedule smoothens the operations.

Johannes Larsson, Financer.com

9. Net Promoter Score (NPS) feedback

Every business should be collecting customer feedback. If you are, you know that it can be a time-consuming process. And if it’s collected manually, you risk collecting feedback at inopportune times or missing the opportunity entirely. NPS feedback is crucial to customer relationship management and future marketing strategy.

We run team-building events and training programs for corporate groups. We have an automation in place that automatically sends an NPS survey to customers the day after their event.

By automating our NPS, we also allow ourselves to automate referral requests from folks that gave us a 9 or 10 NPS rating. On the flip side, we have automated processes that send internal notifications to our team for folks that gave us a lower rating.

Datis Mohsenipour, Outback Team Building & Training

10. Email marketing

When I have to choose one thing that every small business should automate, it should be email marketing. Although it is a cliché nowadays, email marketing campaigns are still greatly underestimated — small businesses can automate it and devote the time saved to other activities.

With email marketing, you are building a community around your product and brand awareness — often[times] email marketing has a very good conversion rate. A few examples of automated email campaigns include:

• Welcome emails
• Abandoned cart emails
• Birthday/anniversary emails

Tomáš Novák, Marketing Miner

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