Businesses built from word-of-mouth referrals is a point of pride. But what happens when you’re ready to expand your reach? You’ve got to boost your findability online – so when people stumble across your business based on a Google search or heard about you from a friend… you’re easily found.
If referrals are your #1 source of new business, it means you’ve got a steady clientele raving about you, your product, and their outstanding results. You might be thinking… “now, I’ll sit back and ride this wave”.
WRONG. Jump back on your surfboard and paddle out into the deep. This is your chance to catch the big one.
I see small businesses make this mistake quite often – heavily rely on referral marketing – but here’s the deal… referral marketing can only get you so far. It’s a great way to instill confidence in your business and product but will not carry you to greatness.
You’ve got to take that next step and employ SEO to beef up your website. There are a lot of ways you can do that such as, hiring an expert, becoming an expert yourself and doing the work, or (my favorite) using SEO research tools.
SEO pretends to be a scary acronym, but in reality, it’s pretty nerdy. All SEO stands for is “search engine optimization” or in regular human talk, “words that make your business easy to find online”. WTMYBETFO doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue…
One aspect of SEO that I enjoy most is the psychological research that goes into knowing how or with what words your ideal customer will look for you. You’ve really got to know how your audience thinks and where they’re at in the ‘customer journey’ to nail the SEO game – and there are tools for that.
Two of the tools I use when writing SEO are Spyfu or SemRush – because they allow me to see what the competitors are doing.
Then all I do is use the knowledge gained from those sites and apply it to my existing copy. It doesn’t have to be overly complicated to work. As long as you tweak your content to focus on your niche, you will have successfully written copy on your site that is keyword rich AKA optimized for SEO.
Once you have that major step complete, only then would I recommend running a PPC (paid-per-click) ad campaign to help reach new customers. Remember a while back when I gave you the DOs and DONTs of running a PPC campaign? I stand by everything I said in that blog and am more than happy to speak if you’re considering launching one for your business.
Lisa M Gale Digital Marketing helps service professional business owners improve their online presence and visibility to attract new clients. We develop systems and processes to improve digital marketing efforts and help entrepreneurs reach their business goals. Download your Digital Marketing Made Simple for free here >>
