Expectations vs. Reality of Business Blogging
Now that we've cleared up some misconceptions, let's tackle the issue of what to expect from online business
We all want results yesterday, so our expectations often need a reality-check. Here are four of the biggest.
Expectation #1: Our customers don't read blogs
Reality: Not all of your customers read blogs, but they all use Google to find answers and information. If your blog has the information they're looking for, they'll find that information and discover your brand.
It's extremely difficult to do internet research for a product or service and not end up reading several blog posts. Your customers might not be avid blog readers intentionally, but they'll definitely visit your blog site to read a post if it delivers the information they're looking for.
Expectation #2: If I build it, they will come
Reality: Waiting for blog readers to find you is a waste of time. Business blogs need a solid promotion strategy to get their content in front of their buyer personas.
Over time, yes, they will come -- but you'll grow your blog readership faster by actively promoting your content.
Expectation #3: Every post I publish is going to be awesome because I'm awesome
Reality: As Former IMPACT Content Marketing Manager, Carly Stec, explains:
"You're right. You are awesome, but the truth is, some posts simply miss the mark. Sometimes it's the content and other times it's a lackluster headline. In worst case scenarios, it's both."
- Carly Stec, Staff Writer at HubSpot (Former Content Marketing Manager at IMPACT)
Every blog post isn't going to be a hit, but the good news is they don't have to be for your business blog to be successful. You just need to get it right most of the time.
Expectation #4: Blogging will take up too much of my precious time
Reality: Time invested in your business blog is time well-spent, but blogging is a time-consuming endeavor. If you don't have the time to dedicate to blogging, you should seriously consider hiring someone to do it for you.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for success when blogging for business. Every brand wants to own the first page of Google for their industry, but only a few can.
On-Page SEO
In order to be fully optimized and help your blog articles rank higher in search results, your focus keyword should appear in all of the following “On-Page” SEO areas: URL, Page Title, Section Header, Subheaders, Main Content, Image ALT Text, and Meta Description.
To illustrate this, let’s say you are creating a new article centered around the keyword: “Organization Optimization”:
Page Title (H1) (Max. 70 Characters): Organization Optimization Through [Your Company’s Name]
Section Header (H2): How Can [Your Company]’s Technology Help Your Organization Optimization?
Main Content (Within the first 200 words): “Effective organization optimization can help improve your employee experience, company culture ..”
Image ALT text: organization-optimization-through-technology Meta Description (Max. 150 characters): Learn more about how [Your Company]’s technology for organization optimization can benefit your business.
In addition to these on-page elements, one of the most effective (but often underappreciated) ways to dominate SEO is to blog more frequently than your competitors.
Frequent Blogging
As any online marketer will tell you, every customer started simply as a visitor to their website. According to HubSpot, 78% of Internet users conduct product research online.
By frequently blogging fresh, relevant content focused on solving the problems of your consumers, you’re effectively producing more indexed pages to be picked up by the search engines.
Why is this significant?
Well, simply put, when close to 80% of all Internet users are searching for product information through search engines, wouldn’t you rather your blogs to be a resource for these users rather than your competitors?
How to Promote Your Local Business with These 7 Marketing Strategies
To survive, promote local business need to learn how to adapt to the modern way of marketing.
If you are seeing a plateau or decline in sales, it’s time for you to mix up your marketing strategy.
Even if your small business is profitable right now, you need to stay ahead of your competition to remain successful in the future.
Analyze the latest marketing trends. Recognize the consumer buying behavior. Learn how to get more money from your existing customers.
Unfortunately, only 33% of small businesses reach the 10-year mark. The rest fail.
I don’t want you to become the sad statistic. This was my inspiration for writing this guide.
If your company is new, you need to do everything possible to stay strong for years to come.
Local businesses that have been around for decades may be ready for a marketing facelift. Your strategies that worked 20 years ago probably won’t be as successful in 2018 and beyond.
I narrowed down the top 15 marketing tactics for local business owners. Use this guide as a reference for your future marketing campaigns.
1. Set up your free listing with Google
How are new customers finding you?
If you’re old-school, you may be relying on word of mouth, radio promotions, print ads, and direct mailing.
But last year, 97% of consumers searched the Internet for a local business.
Furthermore, positive online reviews make 73% of consumers trust local businesses.
That’s why you need to make sure your local business is listed on Google.
When people use the Internet to search for something, they start with Google.
Setting up your free Google listing makes it easy for consumers to find you when they search for terms related to your business.
Your listing will have all your information:
- address
- phone number
- hours
- directions
- link to website
You’ll be able to add photos to give people a better understanding of the way you operate.
Customers will also be able to add photos. They’ll write reviews about your local business for other people to see, which will have a major impact on your successful.
You need to learn how to get your customers to recommend your brand to others.
Your star rating is the number one factor used by consumers to determine whether they’ll buy from your local business.
In fact, 94% of customers will use businesses with a 4-star rating.
2. Start blogging
As you’ve just seen, consumers use the Internet to find local businesses.
That means you need to understand the basic principles of SEO if you want to increase your chances of getting ranked as a top result.
Roughly 47% of clicks go to the top three positions of Google search results.
Blogging will help you tremendously with your SEO strategy. Just look at these numbers:
More website traffic, more followers, and more leads will ultimately translate to increased profits.
Publishing new blog posts means your website will be updated more frequently with fresh content, which will increase your chances of getting a higher search ranking.
Plus, your posts are a great place to add keywords prospective customers may be searching for when browsing online.
Once you’re able to establish a steady group of readers for your blog, they’ll visit your website on a regular basis. The more they visit your site, the greater the chances you’ll have of getting them to convert.
3. Join a local group
Local businesses need to remain active in their communities. Joining a local group is a great way to stay connected with residents and other business owners.
I suggest joining your local Chamber of Commerce. There will be a small annual fee, but it’s worth it.
Attending these meetings and events will expose your brand to other businesses.
Will your competitors be part of these groups? It’s possible. But that’s even more of a reason for you to be there.
Let’s say you own a local t-shirt company.
Another local business may be hosting an event in town and need custom shirts made. Rather than ordering the shirts online, they’ll be more inclined to use your services if you both belong to the same local group.
That’s the whole idea behind joining. The businesses look out for one another and always try to support local brands.
4. Give back to the community
Being part of a local community also means you need to give back.
If you’re charitable, don’t be shy about your involvement. Consumers want to hear about how your local business supports charitable causes.
Research shows 91% of customers say they are willing to switch brands if it means supporting one associated with a charitable cause.
And 85% of consumers will have a more positive image of your local business if you support a charity they care about.
You can even ask your community and customers which charities you should support. Studies show 39% of people want to help decide on the charities a business supports by a voting system.
It’s a safe bet to associate with local charities.
This will definitely help you and your business become closer to your community.
You can approach this in many ways.
For starters, you can make an annual contribution to a charity.
You can also run special promotions with a certain percentage of sales on a particular day or week goes to a cause.
Giving back to your community doesn’t always mean donating to a charity.
For example, let’s say you own a local restaurant. You can provide food for a public high school graduation event. These types of parties run by the school are intended to keep students safe and sober on the night of their graduation.
5. Run contests
Contests are a great way to get people excited about your local business.
The best way to run these contests is through online platforms. Leverage your social media profiles for this strategy.
Run contests that encourage user-generated content. For example, ask your followers to post pictures related to your business. Then pick a winner based on who gets the most likes on their photo.
The whole idea behind these contests is to grow your social media following.
If people see their friends and family posting about your local business on their social profiles, it will increase your exposure and increase the chances of them following you as well.
Now you’ll be able to post promotional content aimed at your new followers that converts them into customers.
6. Verify your information on Yelp
In addition to your Google listing, your local business will also have profiles set up on other platforms, whether you signed up or not.
For example, you may have a Yelp profile because customers rated and reviewed your business.
It’s important that you make sure all your information such as your store hours, phone number, address, and website is accurate on these platforms.
More than 90% of consumers make a purchase after viewing a business on Yelp.
If a customer tries to contact you and the phone number is wrong, or if they show up to your store thinking you’re open and you’re actually closed, it’s going to hurt you.
It’s in your best interest to claim your business on Yelp so that you can control the information in your listing.
7. Implement a customer loyalty program
If you’re looking for a fast way to increase sales, you need to learn how to create a customer loyalty program.
The best part about this marketing tactic is you can make more money without having to acquire new customers. Your focus will be on getting your existing customers to spend more money.
The goal of your loyalty program should focus on two things:
- increasing purchase frequency
- increasing average purchase amount
By accomplishing these two things, you’ll be able to drive growth through sales.
More than 82% of consumers are more likely to shop at stores with customer loyalty programs.
Your loyalty program could be something as simple as a punch card. On the 10th visit, the customer gets a free reward or something like that.
Or you can set up a system that’s a little bit more in-depth. Reward your highest spending customers by implementing a loyalty program based on different spending tiers.
The best way to track this type of program is with a customer profile or mobile app, but we’ll discuss that in greater detail shortly.
The Definitive Google Shopping Ads Handbook: 2020 Edition
The ecommerce industry is accelerating at an unprecedented pace, fueled by the ongoing impact of the coronavirus pandemic that has taken the globe in nothing less than epic proportions.
Although the economic ramifications have been hard-felt by many, consumer behavior in shopping online has not waned — it has risen and continues to rise.
People are stuck at home, their kids are stuck at home, and with that they are spending more time shopping online.
The bottom line for Ecommerce store owners? If you aren’t there, you are nowhere.
With billions of searches per day on Google, it’s one of the first places shoppers go to discover or find products online. Whether they’re searching for products, watching related videos, comparing images, or talking to their assistants, it is beyond crucial that you are there to grab their attention.
What is Google Shopping?
Before we even touch on Shopping ads, we should first explore that it is NOT advertising. Most merchants, and even advertisers, still associate the term “Google Shopping” with ads on Google — but that is just not the case anymore.
To put it simply, Google Shopping is a way for consumers to search, browse, and compare products across a wide variety of brands and retailers — yet that barely scrapes the surface in explaining it.
In 2019, at Google Marketing Live, Google officially announced the New Google Shopping Experience in the United States only. What was once known as Google Express, Google did away with Express, and “rebranded” to, you guessed it, Google Shopping!
With it, Google took the best that Express had to offer consumers — things such as native checkout, easy re-ordering, and all tied to their Google account — and merged it with their general brand umbrella.
Retailers do not leverage Shopping ads to appear on the New Google Shopping Experience. Instead, they must enable a program within Merchant Center called Shopping Actions. These particular product listings do not direct shoppers back to the store as all the purchasing occurs natively in Google Shopping — this now being known as Buy on Google.
Shopping Actions or Buy on Google used to follow a cost-per-sale model where retailers would pay a fee or commission to Google when someone purchases, similar to a marketplace like Amazon.
As of July 23, 2020 Google has done away with the commission fees for those new to the program while those already selling will migrate over a few weeks’ time. Furthermore, there is currently a waitlist period wherein new merchants will no longer be able to onboard to Shopping Actions for some time.
In April 2020, Google announced Free Product Listings in the United States by way of another Merchant Center program called Surfaces across Google.
Accelerated by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and continued spread of COVID-19, the Shopping tab on Google now consists almost entirely of these Free Product Listings – with some Shopping ads and Buy on Google results peppered in.
These free listings do in fact direct shoppers back to the ecommerce store and merchants do not pay a fee or a cost per click to get that traffic.
The roll-out of free or organic product listings on Google actually stretches back to February of 2019 and was enhanced again back in January of 2020.
What are Google Shopping ads?
For anyone selling consumer goods online, or even downloadable products, Shopping ads on Google represent one of, if not the most lucrative pay-per-click or search engine marketing opportunity around for ecommerce businesses.
An advertising campaign type within Google Ads, Shopping ads (sometimes still referred to as PLAs or Product Listing Ads) show up across a number of Google’s properties (including Search, Images, even YouTube) and can reach shoppers wherever, and whenever, they’re searching on Google.
Retailers, in most cases at least, pay a fee (aka cost-per-click or CPC) when someone clicks on their Shopping ads – this is referred to as bidding. Once clicked on, the ad unit directs a potential back to that product’s landing page on one’s ecommerce website.
In most cases, Shopping ads appear “above the fold” – before any organic search results and even before Search or Text Ads on Google. These ads display relevant product information to shoppers such as price, seller, and can even show product review stars.
With the launch of Free Product Listings on Google, Shopping ads continue to show less and less on the Shopping tab. This has made it even more important for retailers to take up what digital shelf space is left to continue to drive quality traffic and increase sales for their ecommerce businesses.
As of July, Google has just released free and fast annotations for Google Shopping Ads. This new feature for Shopping ads units highlight not only free shipping on products but also expected delivery and/or arrival times:
How Does Google Shopping Work?
At the center of all things on Google are keywords or search queries. Anything that appears on Google, be it Shopping ads, Buy on Google, Free Product Listings, or any search result whatsoever is controlled by what people type into the search bar.
In the background, Google’s algorithms try to best match those results with the words typed in by the user.
When it comes to Shopping ads, there is no “bidding” on keywords as with traditional text-based or Search Ads. Instead, retailers and advertisers bid on the actual products themselves to get them to appear in those coveted positions on Google.
Since Shopping Actions (Buy on Google) and Surfaces across Google (Free Product Listings) are not, in any way, a form of advertising, these too do not involve any kind of bidding on keywords.
To be eligible for any of these programs, retailers must submit what is called a Product Feed to Google Merchant Center. This product feed is essentially a catalog of one’s products and product data such as titles and descriptions.
It is that very same product data that Google uses to fuel the results of what a potential shopper types into Google.
BigCommerce IPO: Ecommerce for a New Era
n behalf of BigCommerce, I am delighted to share an exciting milestone. Today, Big Commerce joins the Nasdaq family to become a public company!
I am so appreciative of our team, our partners, and in particular, every one of our customers around the world.
As some of our customers remember, co-founders Mitchell Harper and Eddie Machaalani launched BigCommerce in 2009 with the goal to make it easier for small businesses to sell online. Ecommerce accounted for less than 6% of total U.S. retail sales at the time, but Eddie and Mitch saw the great potential for small businesses to succeed if they had an easy-to-use, affordable ecommerce platform.
Over the years, our platform, our customers, and our ecosystem have grown together. Some of our most innovative product updates were driven largely by what customers told us you needed in order to compete. From the introduction of enterprise features to our WordPress integration to Page Builder, our platform and our team are better because of the imagination and input from our customers.
As a result of the global pandemic, 2020 will bring the fastest growth in online sales to date. More than ever during these challenging times, we remain committed to serving you and living up to our company value of “Customers First”. Thank you for placing your trust in us. We are honored to serve you.
What’s Next?
This is a huge moment for our company, but more importantly, we are excited for the journey we still have ahead of us.
With the proceeds from our IPO, we look forward to further investing in the research and development of our platform. We will continue to innovate our product and service with the goal of powering your ecommerce prosperity.
Going public does not change our mission of giving customers of all sizes the tools you need to build, innovate and grow successful ecommerce businesses. The BigCommerce platform meets you where you are as a business, whether you’re new to selling online or a Forbes Global 2000 enterprise. We will continue to update the platform in ways that bring the most benefit to the most merchants. Our IPO is just one step in the journey on this mission.
As a public company, we’ll be able to provide all our stakeholders more transparency than ever into our size, momentum and industry leadership. We hope this gives you confidence that you’ve partnered with an industry-leading platform that’s poised to innovate for many years to come.
I’ll end by emphasizing my gratitude to the many people in the BigCommerce ecosystem. To our customers, thank you again for inspiring and enabling our growth. Everything we do is for you. I’d love to see you at our next Town Hall on August 27.
To our technology and agency partners, we are inspired to grow in true partnership with you. To our employees, every single one of you has played a role in making this historic moment possible. You are the heartbeat of our company, and I thank you for your energy, dedication and passion. To our board members and investors, thank you for your financial backing, counsel, and guidance.
