SEO Performance & Moving Your Website Host

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Here’s a little known secret: many people are afraid to switch their web hosts. But eventually your once state-of-the-art website will begin to lag in performance and speed. However, it is important to be aware of the value of updating your web host and the difference it makes for your site. Read on to find out why. 

When you’re in the process of optimizing your web pages your goal is to have your content rank high on a search engine, like Google. Ideally, you want your content at the top of a search engine’s results for keywords relevant to your product or services.

Changing the location of your website hosting can impact its performance in search results. It may sound a little scary at first when your website hosts are slow but don’t panic – the rankings will come back!

Here’s what you should know about changing your website host location.

Google Slowing Down Your Website

The first thing you will notice when you move your host location is that your website is slow, perhaps extremely slow. Rest assured, this isn’t something that will stay that way for long. Google makes your website slow when they notice a change in host. They do this so Google won’t cause any problems in the future.

Whether you’re moving to a hosting provider in the same location, or a new location, Google will be cautious with how much it crawls the site. Over time, once Google’s systems can tell that going faster doesn’t cause any issues, they’ll speed up again. This is independent of the kind of hosting change you make. It doesn’t make a difference if you’re moving to a different provider down the road, or moving to another country.

Impact on Website Loading Times

There are a couple of different scenarios that are at play if you’re thinking about moving your website. If you’re thinking about moving your website hosting to a new location, this can have an impact on how fast your website will load for your users. If a majority of users live far away from where the website is hosted, it could lead to a slower user experience. 

In turn, that could affect the speed and page experience ranking factors. Depending on how strongly this is visible, that can play a role in speed and the page experience ranking factor for a website.

Hosting Your Website in Multiple Locations

To avoid the likelihood of your website loading time being affected, you could host your website on servers in multiple locations. Content delivery networks, also known as (CDNs) often do this, and depending on the hosting platform you’re using your site may be on multiple servers already.

If you’re using a hosting platform the chances of them already doing this for you is high. With SEO, the server’s location is unfortunately not used for geo-targeting. If you want your website to target users in a specific location, you would need to use either the country-code top level domain, or the appropriate setting in Google Search Console.

A country-code top-level domain is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code. The appropriate setting in the Google Search Console can be found in the international targeting report in your settings. 

  • Use the International Targeting report to monitor your hreflang errors, or to choose a country that should be prioritized for your search results. This report has the following sections:
  • The Language section: Monitor the usage and errors of hreflang tags on your site. 
  • The Country section: Set a site-wide country target for your entire site, if desired.

Final Thoughts

Overall, changing the location of your website host will temporarily impact crawling on your website, and has the potential to impact loading time. It’s important to remember that this type of change will not impact SEO when it comes to geo-targeting.

At Onimod Global, our goal is to ensure we help improve your marketing and drive success. Our mission is to ensure we help improve your marketing and drive success. We have endless experience and expertise when it comes to all things SEO, general social media advertising, and digital marketing.

We have a preferred hosting vendor that boosts SEO performance. If you’d like to learn more about our hosting vendor and our services contact us today! 

The Importance of Digital Marketing in 2022

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Digital marketing is more important now than ever. You can utilize digital marketing to target specialized markets, allowing you to reach out to customers who may not have previously considered your company. But this industry is fast-growing, which also means ever changing and evolving. Where do you start if you want to develop a digital marketing strategy? Right here. 

As marketers think about building brands in the coming years post-COVID, how is digital marketing being leveraged to help companies bounce back? More importantly, how should you redefine your strategy for 2022?

According to a CISCO report, 90% of North Americans use the internet, and usage is expected to reach 92% by next year. Customers are now spending more time and resources on owned-media channels such as websites, mobile apps, and customer-service channels. There is also a noticeable increase in customer-conversion rates, with social and digital video channels driving the highest ROIs.

Having a digital marketing strategy in place allows you to reach millions of people cost-effectively. If your business doesn’t have a strategic digital marketing plan aligned with your business plan your business can suffer and you could lose out to competitors who are more digitally savvy.

Reasons To Use Digital Marketing

1. Reach a Specific Audience. 

With media like TV, billboards and radio, you are reaching out to a broad audience, and the chances of targeting a specific group of customers is low. Whereas in digital marketing, you can use the features of a marketing platform to specifically target an audience based on age, interests or behavior. 

Your chances of reaching the right audience are significantly higher, and you can pick and choose these metrics as your needs change. It also allows you to identify subgroups within your clientele. If you have more than one type of product, you can tailor a campaign to this more specific group of customers.

2. Access Metrics of your Digital Marketing Strategy ─ All in One Place.

Digital marketing metrics are the key performance indicators (KPIs) used to measure the success of a business’s marketing efforts online. The goal of using digital marketing metrics is to track and decipher the way consumers interact with your brand online through websites and social media platforms. While there are many benefits of using metrics, the main use of metrics are used to drive improvements and help businesses focus their people and resources on what’s important. Overall, metrics reflect and support the various strategies for all aspects of the organization, including marketing, competition, standards, or customer requirements and expectations. 

Metrics indicate the priorities of the company and provide a window on performance, ethos and ambition. This allows you to determine your return on investment. You know exactly how profitable your digital marketing campaign was, as you can see the results of each aspect of your efforts.

3. Becoming Visible Within the Industry.

Some of the largest corporations have millions of dollars to spend on traditional advertising. If you don’t have that kind of ammunition, digital strategies allow you to outrank big corporations on a smaller budget. 

Here’s what visibility in business can do for you:

  • Helps you get exposure to a larger audience.
  • Build your brand awareness, so that people know who you are and how you help. 
  • Establishes your credibility and expertise.
  • Allows you to reach and sign more ideal clients.
  • Connects you to opportunities you wouldn’t have otherwise. 

Search Engine Optimization

SEO is made up of multiple elements, and knowing what they are and how they work is key to understanding why SEO is so important. In short, SEO is crucial because it makes your website more visible, and that means more traffic and more opportunities to convert prospects into customers. 

It’s also a valuable tool for brand awareness, building relationships with prospects, and positioning yourself as an authoritative and trustworthy expert in your field. More traffic means more potential clients becoming aware of your brand and services.

SEO is composed of three parts:

  • On-page SEO focuses on the content on your website’s pages. You can research keywords that resonate with your buyer persona or keywords that potential clients might ask. The task is to create quality content when answering those questions, so your pages rank higher.
  • Off-page SEO relates to all activity that happens away from your website. It involves external optimization practices that happen away from your site rather than on it. The main technique used for off-page SEO is backlink building since quality backlinks to your site from external sites tell search engines that your site is valuable and high-quality which helps to build authority.
  • Technical SEO is the back end of your website. Things like coding, image compression and cascading style sheets, also known as CSS. These are important aspects of your website that determine how quickly your pages load. Search engines like Google use it as an important ranking factor.

Social Media Marketing

Social media networks are open to all, giving businesses a chance to follow their consumers’ activities or potential buyers. This helps marketers become more informed about their target audience, likes, dislikes, and interests so that they can create a better marketing strategy to attract customers. The opportunities are endless when it comes to social media marketing. A big plus in  using this type of marketing tool is that most of the basic services are free. 

The end goal is to create more traffic and generate leads for your business. The social media channels you can use for this purpose are:

  • Facebook.
  • Twitter.
  • LinkedIn.
  • Instagram.
  • Snapchat.
  • YouTube.
  • TikTok
  • Pinterest

In an increasingly connected world, your approach to marketing must be just as integrated.

Last Thoughts

In this day and age where just about everyone is connected to the internet, it is crucial for any business to have a strong online presence. As we continue to move forward within the digital age, younger generations are likely to be centered on using the internet to access different services. Having a strong digital marketing strategy is a must if you want to succeed in the increasingly competitive industries across the globe.

Could your digital marketing strategy use a boost? Onimod Global is your Chicago-based, in-house marketing team, your partner experts for specific marketing verticals or some nice balance in between. We excel in customer service and will teach you the most relevant and up-to-date digital marketing trends. From social media to SEO and paid search, you will have the tools to ensure your business succeeds online.  

Have questions about creating your online presence and need help strategizing? Contact us here today.

Mastering Storytelling Content in 2022

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A well known shift in content marketing over the past 5 years has taken the form of storytelling. At its most basic definition, the digital storytelling process involves using a mixture of content and digital media to bring a narrative to life. Consumers have shown that a product or service that offers an experience is much more attractive to them. Storytelling takes content marketing to a whole new level where a customer is understood, inspired, compelled to use their imagination.

Principal analyst Brian Solis with Alimeter Group shares with MarketingLand what marketers must know today about the gap between content marketing and storytelling.

What should businesses know about storytelling?

Brian says: There are some common pillars of quality storytelling — and it all starts with knowing your audience, what they love/don’t love, what they value, etc.

Aside from the seven common plots of story, there are pillars that resonate with certain audiences, depending on their goals and yours. These include inspiration, usefulness, importance and inclusivity, just to name a few — and these apply to content marketing, too.

How does storytelling make an impact on digital marketing? 

Digital storytelling is now crucial to a successful digital marketing campaign tying together several forms of media; social media at the forefront of this campaign. In any successful marketing campaign, the goal is to achieve wider engagement from your target audience and build up a loyal customer base that identify with your brand and cling to your product or service for longer. Storytelling in digital marketing addresses the needs of a fast-paced society in which people cut through a lot of ‘fluff content’ and look to receive information and consume content as fast as possible.

Capturing the attention of potential customers is an important step towards reaching one of your main goals – gaining your customers’ loyalty. That is why storytelling has become so important to the success of digital marketing. It sets apart vibrant brands from simple businesses and loyal consumers from one-time, stop-in shoppers.

Here are three ways storytelling impacts digital marketing and how you can benefit from it:

1. Build up trust with your audience

Traditional boring and straight-forward marketing doesn’t help you form a bond with consumers. Instead, it’s information-packed content overwhelming or boring the user and often reads like assembly instructions. Storytelling is much more intriguing and urges people to follow along engaging with the story. It addresses consumer pain points on a deeper, more intimate level and doesn’t give off the impersonal and cold vibes of a hard sell.

2. Connecting with your target audience

Most consumers have mastered an art of their own — ignoring sales pitches. These days, people are inundated with marketing ads. This has conditioned the brain to skim information and dismiss anything unattractive, simple, and mundane. Digital storytelling, however, can engage them in a manner that leaves them more receptive to marketing efforts.

3. Branding with a genuine meaning

Actions speak much louder than words for customers of 2022. Using digital storytelling to demonstrate how your company is dedicated to your mission, as well as your customers, can help you prove that you’re in it for the right reasons. Taking people along on your journey to show step by step how your business evolved, the experiences you’ve had, and how this helped you provide solutions to their problems will capture your audience’s attention and personify your business.

More from Onimod Global

In addition to storytelling content in 2022 and other digital marketing updates, we will continue to share case studies and the latest SEO updates to help you drive your business. Our goal is to ensure we help improve your marketing and drive success.

At Onimod Global, we have expertise expertise when it comes to all things SEO, general social media advertising, and digital marketing. We would love to work with you and assist with your company’s content creation needs. Got questions about content creation or want to learn more about us? Contact us here today.

Google Revamps Search Ads 360

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Google has revamped Search Ads 360, a search management platform, the company announced on February 8th. This update and refresh of this platform includes support for some newer Google Ads features such as Discovery campaigns and Performance Max, search engine support for other brands, a new interface for the platform as well as workflow improvements. The refreshed UI will start rolling out over the next few months. Google plans to share the timeline of migration as the year goes on.

What is Search Ads 360?

Defined directly by Google, “Search Ads 360 is a search management platform that helps agencies and marketers efficiently manage some of the largest search marketing campaigns in the world, across multiple engines and media channels.” The pros of this platform has been streamlined workflow and reporting features that enable buyers to run their campaigns more efficiently, and automated bidding is included as well to improve campaign performance. Built-in integration with the Google Marketing Platform allows buyers to manage and track digital campaigns across a single platform, enabling rich, cross-channel buying, reporting and attribution.

What’s new in Search Ads 360?

Supports new Google features. The new version of Search Ads 360 was redesigned and relaunched using the same technology that powers Google Ads, the newer platform between the two. Having this common technology as the foundation enables support for most new Google Ads features, such as Performance Max and Discovery campaigns.

Support for other search engines. One of the main selling points for the updated 360 platform is the ability to manage your ads across different channels, including other search engines. Search Ads 360 allows Google to add support for more features from other search engines.

For example, the updated platform now supports additional Microsoft Advertising features, which includes responsive search ads, call extensions, and additional Microsoft audience types like customer match. Support for Yahoo! Japan’s Dynamic Ads for Search and sitelink extension scheduling are also now available.

Google will continue to add more features and channel support in the coming quarters.

New advanced features for enterprises. In addition to support for existing features, Google is also rolling out completely new features for Search Ads 360.

“For instance, the new Search Ads 360 takes enterprise workflows to the next level by giving you new ways to centralize and scale your day-to-day tasks and key activities — like campaign management, automated rules and labels — and you’ll now be able to make these changes across multiple advertisers at the same time,” Google said in the announcement.

The company is also making upgrades to existing features: The “Performance Center,” which will become available later this year, is touted as an improved budget management planner with support for enterprise planning capabilities, like improved forecasting across search engines.

And, the existing inventory management and ad builder tools will be unified into one feature, which will be called “Templates.” Templates is also expected to become available later this year.

Refreshed UI. Google also updated the interface of Search Ads 360, borrowing elements from the Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising UIs. This may make navigation more efficient since advertisers may already be familiar with it.

More from Onimod Global

More information on the update can be found in Google’s update. In addition to Google news and other digital marketing updates, we will continue to share case studies and the latest SEO updates to help you drive your business. Our goal is to ensure we help improve your marketing and drive success.

At Onimod Global, we have endless experience and expertise when it comes to all things SEO, general social media advertising, and digital marketing. Got questions about Facebook advertising or want to learn more about us? Contact us here today.

B2B Digital Marketing Trends To Expect In 2022

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2022 is here, which means it’s time to forecast a new era of B2B marketing trends. After chaotic months and years, innovation is accelerating at a pace faster than ever. The digital transformation of the economy and the ever-accelerating climb of e-commerce success are projected to bring in significant change in 2022. It is already very evident how digital transformation and the eCommerce boom will change the way B2B sales during 2022. We’ll explain the B2B digital marketing trends to expect in 2022.

Shifts in Spending to Mobile-First Strategy

This upcoming year, mobile and digital advertising will continue to become central to B2B marketing efforts. At the same time, marketers are also adjusting to a work-from-home reality. Nearly 70% of buyers in B2B industries and decision-makers prefer remote or digital interactions with vendors. This number is even expected to rise in the next years, so it’s also safe to assume that these buyers will additionally respond better most likely to more digital marketing strategies.

A digital-first marketing approach is quickly becoming the ‘holy grail’ strategy for digital marketers which prioritizes mobile advertising and content over offline and more traditional strategies. This will probably come with growing ad spend — though growth is on track to be slower next year than it has been in the past, partly due to the lingering effects of COVID-19.

The number of buyers who want a seller-free experience has grown in conjunction with the amount of millennials in decision-making roles. More direct and virtual approaches to B2B digital marketing may become more popular among B2B marketers as a result.

High-tech interactions with B2B customers

Building off of the first trend, we see technology advances so will the need to leverage increasingly high-tech communication methods. This includes both how you send and receive messages from your B2B prospects.

For example, in 2022, optimizing for new forms of search – like audio and image – will be vital to capture traffic. Additionally, marketing chatbots and AI can help marketers get in touch with more customers and minimize their wait time.

Interactive emails can also increase conversions and improve ROI, helping your business get more out of each communication. AMP emails that enable B2B marketers to provide application-like functionality in a message are standard methods to implement and deliver this interactivity. These are just a couple of examples of how technology will make it easier to reach businesses in 2022.

Shift of lead generation channels

The top goal of B2B marketing is not only generating leads, but ensuring that the leads are of high quality standard. How the leads are developed is likely to change significantly in 2022 and through the rest of the decade. COVID-19 impacted how events are hosted. While some businesses pivoted to online events and others chose to delay or cancel, all marketers had to adapt quickly to the reality that in-person events were no longer always available to generate leads. Several digital marketers have turned to social media for lead gen creation, and haven’t looked back including B2B digital marketing experts at Onimod Global.

The most popular style of social media marketing is also changing quickly. Many B2B digital marketers are now more interested in personalized and specific targeted strategies. Many platforms offer targeting tools with extremely fine levels of detail so they can deliver niche content to specific audiences.

More from Onimod Global

Taking advantage of these digital marketing trends for B2B marketing in 2022 can make the biggest difference in the performance of your lead generation. We will continue to share case studies and the latest SEO updates to help you drive your business. Our goal is to ensure we help improve your marketing and drive success. Our mission is to ensure we help improve your marketing and drive success.

At Onimod Global, we have endless experience and expertise when it comes to all things SEO, general social media advertising, and digital marketing. Got questions about Google display ads or want to learn more about us? Contact us here today.

3 Simple Ways Blog Posts Can Improve SEO Results

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Search engine optimization, or SEO, is incredibly important for marketers which we often write about here at Onimod Global. When you optimize your web pages — including the blog posts in your blog or news section — you’re creating more visibility for your website and allowing people who are using search engines (like Google) to find your product or service. But does your blog content really help your business organically rank on search engines?

You may have a blog, but unfortunately very few organizations know how to fully capitalize on their content in order to maximize SEO results. Check out these three simple ways a blog can improve your website’s organic visibility, traffic and results.

 Reach a specific audience with each post

Start every blog with a very specific audience in mind, and think to yourself questions that users on your website may be looking for. This allows marketers to create content that is optimized for specific customers and contains target keywords related to specific needs and solutions. Let’s say for example you are a CBD brand, think of questions may users have about your product where you can easily reach them. Perhaps one of those questions may be, what is CBD and how is it useful in products? We suggest to use a title for your blog encompassing that question while the blog post content does a thorough deep dive on the subject providing useful information. The title of your blog post could be “Everything To Know About CBD & CBD Products” or “CBD 101: What Is It and Why Use It?”

These titles encompass the questions your user may ask while also coming from a credible source. This can have a massive impact with SEO results with just this small detail in mind while you’re composing and concepting new posts.

Use Recent Data

Google and other smart engines are quite intelligent in the sense that they can even recognize when data you refer to or a website you are referencing is outdated and affect your SEO. Recent data also gives your users the most accurate and relevant information anyways which will result in a positive reader experience.

When you include a link to a credible site that has original, up-to-date data, the search engine interprets that this site is helpful and relevant to your readers (which is a plus for that other site as well actually). At the same time, you’re also telling the search engine that this type of data is in some way related to the content you publish. Over time, your readers will come to appreciate the content which can be confirmed using other metrics like increased time on page or lower bounce rate.

Share Your Blog Posts On Social Media

An often overlooked advantage, sharing your blog posts on social media requires time but also gets visibility of your content out to your audience in a multitude of ways. This in turn improves the engagement and traffic of the blog, but also has the potential to grow your social accounts as well.

Several other benefits include:

  1. It keeps your social media sites current and relevant.
  2. It helps keep your audience engaged.
  3. Because social signals are included in the ranking algorithm, it improves SEO results.
  4. Social links help to increase referral traffic.

Just remember to include keywords you are targeting within the social media posting as these social signals can help with rankings.

Final Thoughts

In addition to blog post optimization and other digital marketing updates, we will continue to share case studies and the latest SEO updates to help you drive your business. Our goal is to ensure we help improve your marketing and drive success.

At Onimod Global, we have endless experience and expertise when it comes to all things SEO, general social media advertising, and digital marketing. Got questions about Facebook advertising or want to learn more about us? Contact us here today.

How To Create Successful Display Ads in 2022

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Is one of your 2022 New Years resolutions higher reach for your business’s online audience? Look no further, Onimod Global experts are here to help you achieve this goal. Google, the world’s most popular search engine, is definitely a great place to get started when it comes to advertising online and utlitzing their display ads. In this blog post, you’ll learn best practices for Google Ads and tips on making your campaigns successful.

What is a display ad?

A display ad, or also commonly referred to as a banner ad, is a visual-based form of online advertising. You usually see these ads on websites, apps, and social media platforms.

These ads will feature a photo along with advertising copy. The goal result is a display that is interactive and also encourages users to engage with the ad.

What is the Google Display Network?

In a nutshell, the Google Display Network is a set of websites that your ad can appear on. Millions of websites – this is Google, after all.

All in all, the network is comprised of over 2 million websites, 650,000 apps, and 90% of internet users. When you use the Display Network for advertising, you have the chance to get your ad right in front of that 90%.

How to set your display ads up for success

Get familiar with the targeting options

How successful a campaign and the ads within it is mainly comes down to targeting. The effectiveness of targeting will likely determine the outcome of your campaign over anything else.

There are many ways you can go about targeting an audience, and all depend on the goal of your campaign. For example, you can target ads based on the content of the ad itself, so that it appears next to similar content, such as a dog food ad on a pet website. Another way that you can target ads is based on your target market. Let’s say your dog food business wants to target only older people who like dogs or frequent pet pages. You can also target ads to people who previously have consumed your content in some way, which would be called remarketing. This could be a user who previously visited your website, or interacted with you in other ways (for example, watching a video on your YouTube channel).

The best way to determine which targeting method is right for you is to experiment. Try them all if you can to determine which best suits your business.

Exclude sites that are off-topic in the Google Display Network

Of course, no one wants to show up on an irrelevant website or inappropriate web page. The good news is with Google, they allow you to avoid this.

Google allows you to exclude certain sites or pages that you feel are irrelevant and/or inappropriate for the good or service your business provides.You can also block sites where your ads don’t perform well.

You can prevent your display ads from appearing in certain locations, based on:

  • app category
  • any specific topics
  • device used such as: computer, tablet, or mobile

You can also ban specific apps, websites, and content.

Utilize the similar audience feature on the Google Display ads network

This typically only helps you, in the sense that it further hones in on people that will be interested in your display ads. It’s based on your remarketing audience (mentioned above). If you haven’t already, you’ll want to enable remarketing ads before beginning to try out this tip. And according to Google, when you combine Similar Audience targeting with remarketing, you can increase conversions by up to 41%.

More from Onimod Global

Starting off the new year is a clean slate for new business improvements and adjustments, and we’re here to help you achieve all digital marketing goals. Our mission is to ensure we help improve your marketing and drive success.

At Onimod Global, we have endless experience and expertise when it comes to all things SEO, general social media advertising, and digital marketing. Got questions about Google display ads or want to learn more about us? Contact us here today.

3 Tips For Ranking Higher On Google Maps In 2022

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Whether you’re a local small business, a bigger brick and mortar, or anywhere in between, there is no arguing that your Google Maps ranking is one of the most important factors in your online presence. Did you know that 80% of local searches result in a conversion? If you aren’t taking advantage of the opportunity to rank in local searches coming up in 2022, you’re missing the chance to increase lead generation, attract more in-store traffic, and of course reach higher conversions and revenue.

But the hard hitting question: how do you maximize local search? Simple answer: marketing on Google Maps. Keep reading to learn what digital marketing strategy we recommend heading into 2022 and how to rank better on Google Maps to generate higher leads and generate more revenue.

Why your Google Maps listing matters

Google Maps is the most popular map app in the U.S. with over 150 million active users. Millions of people are on the app daily and searching for services to locate businesses meeting their needs. As you think to further market your business locally, you can make big strides in maximizing the benefits of Google Maps by ranking high in relevant searches.

In addition to how relevant this is to the daily smartphone user, consumers often arrive at business listings via direct brand searches, keyword searches, and local discovery searches. With so many ways to get discovered by consumers, optimization has several benefits, which includes:

  •  Providing customers with more ways to engage with your brand
  • Appearing in the local vicinity with high ratings
  • Boosting visibility of your business

Steps to higher ranking

  1. Optimize your listing
    This is the simplest yet most important aspect to increasing your visibility on Google Maps. This particular listing is what your audience sees when they search through Google Maps. If you want to help your listing appear higher in Google Maps search results, you must optimize your listing. This includes adding your business name, phone number, accurate opening hours, and all of the basics. Whether someone sees your information on your Google My Business listing, Facebook, or your website, this information should be the same across all platforms.
  2. Place products at the top of your listing
    Information just released by Google and Search Engine Land explains how you can now add product placement at the top of your Google Maps listing and your Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business. Read more from Search Engine Land on this topic here.
  3. Reviews are key to success
    It can’t be stressed enough how important reviews are to your Google Maps listing. Reviews are crucial to increasing your brand trust and developing transparency around your business. If the Google review is negative, you should always leave a response doing your best to resolve any issue.

Final thoughts

As trusted Google experts, our team is here to help with holistic digital marketing strategies including optimizing your Google Business Profile listing and ensuring you have the highest rank possible. Whether it is SEO tips, social media digital marketing, or paid media strategies, our goal is to make your business more successful. To get in contact with an audit and to see how you can improve your digital presence, get in touch with us here.

Why Digital Marketing is Crucial for Small Businesses

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Effective Digital Marketing is paramount in helping small businesses learn the online habits of customers – which in turn they can better target their ideal customers. Here, we have listed the benefits of digital marketing strategies for small businesses to help them market their products or services with the right digital media planning. 

When small businesses get started, their main focus is how to attract customers to shop at their store and how to get them to utilize your services. Most small businesses may rely on traditional forms of advertising, such as print ads and mailers. Small business owners have a tendency to believe, if they offer a good product or service, it’s only a matter of time until new customers find their way to them.

While this strategy may bring in some business, there is an easier route to take. Small businesses should consider the marketplace of prospects that are available online. Small businesses, no matter how new to market, should never overlook the opportunity that digital channels can bring. This is a way to generate leads and convert interest into customers. Here’s a look at the benefits of digital marketing and the ways online platforms can be used to help grow your business.

Online Marketing & Its Benefits

With endless opportunities, digital marketing can seem intimidating if you’ve never used it for a business before. There are many different social media platforms and marketing terms that may make it seem like a bigger project than it is. It’s easy for small businesses to believe they don’t have the time or money to compete online. As a result, many take things slowly and stick with one or two forms of traditional advertising, assuming that their business will evolve as time passes.

The marketplace is competitive and while word of mouth and customer recommendations can help drive traffic, customers will struggle to find your business unless you show up in the places they spend time. Delaying building a presence online is not an effective approach. The best way to ensure success is to promote your business is to use target marketing to attract customers that are interested in your specific service and/or product. 

You can find an excess of potential customers online. It’s a larger group than you’ll ever be able to attract only locally. Using digital marketing techniques, you can reach a global audience in a way that’s cost-effective, scalable and measurable. Some of the benefits of using Digital Marketing tactics include:

  • Target the right audience at the right time – personalization is simpler with digital marketing.
  • Get to know your audience and drive engagement to create brand loyalty. Get some inspiration by creating a customer loyalty strategy. 
  • Track and monitor responses to your marketing efforts easily and instantly (i.e.) any social media platform which are typically free of cost. 
  • The ability to reach out to anyone and anywhere as there are no geographical boundaries with digital.

Get to Know Your Target Audience

One of the great things about digital marketing is that it allows you to engage with new customers. You can get to know them and their pain points, and in turn, provide them with a solution. Social media and blog posts are a great way to start a conversation. It’s important to make note of any comments or responses to your posts, it’s another great way to strengthen your strategy. Using digital marketing helps you stop wondering who your customers are so you can personalize communications and refine targeting. 

By doing this, you will build a relationship with your customers. You become more than a business, you become a reliable partner. Remember, people are also more likely to buy from businesses that they have already bought from and had a good experience with. When someone is interested in your business, whether it’s in your niche or they are curious about your brand, the first thing they will do is research online and see what they can find out about you. 

With today’s digital age, customers expect to find a business website or social media page easily. They also might be looking for reviews so they can learn what other people are saying about your company and whether it is a good place to do business. For local businesses, 87% of consumers read online reviews – a growth of 6% from 2019 to 2020.

So if a potential new customer can’t find you online, they may conclude that your business doesn’t appear to be legitimate. There is a very good chance that a lot of these prospects may decide not to take your business seriously and they will quickly take their business elsewhere.

Do More While Spending Less

Small businesses and start-ups are always trying to achieve as much as possible through their marketing on a budget. Advertising online can stretch your budget further and will allow you to refine your target audience. Social media is particularly good for this as it enables you to set a daily budget for a discrete audience that has an interest in your brand or ethos. Most importantly, it allows your business to exclude the people that would never buy from you – saving you time and money!

The key with advertising on social media is to select the platform that will work best for you and your brand. Don’t pick TikTok just because it’s trending or advertise on LinkedIn when you’re not trying to generate B2B interest. Research social channels, see which social media platform matches what you’re looking for and run some simple tests to see what messaging and content works. 

Last Thoughts

Ultimately, you are the one steering your business to success. Where do you want to go and what does success look like for you? Are you looking to develop a website that can generate leads? Or maybe you want to set up a Facebook campaign to see the results. The first step to achieving these goals is to develop an understanding of digital marketing and how it can have a positive impact on your business.

Onimod Global is your Chicago-based, in-house marketing team, your partner experts for specific marketing verticals or some nice balance in between. We excel in customer service and will teach you the most relevant and up-to-date digital marketing skills. From social media to SEO and paid search, you will have the tools to ensure your business succeeds online.  

Have questions about creating your online presence and need help strategizing? Contact us here today.

Why You Should Combine Social and SEA

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Are you a PPC connoisseur or a paid social media pro? Are you neither of these things and looking for more insight on how to develop a paid digital marketing strategy? You have definitely come to the right place, as Onimod Global experts are here to share insight on both types of paid digital advertising and where it makes sense for you to invest you ad dollar.

Reasons to combine SEA and social media advertising

Why should PPC and social media ads be combined and regarded as a unit? When you combine the social media activities with PPC, you activate double the power online. Simply put: it’s a great way to increase your brand awareness and generate new leads.

1. PPC is successful: Search engine advertising that is targeted can lead to website traffic and success in just a short period of time. Use this effect to make your social media channels not only grow in following, but also in conversions.

2. Control demographics and usage: Users’ demographics cannot be controlled accurately when only using search engines. One the other hand, social media channels contain a huge collection of personal information such as photos and demographics – it’s worth using these data for PPC as well.

The journey to paid digital advertising

The journey to the goal of your paid digital advertising success is most often anything but straightforward. This is a crucial point that should always be kept in mind during your strategy process. Through being strategic with a funnel ad campaign, your customers may very often come into contact with your brand before they decide to buy. Another important note is people may already know your brand from a variety of platforms and influencers and have become aware of you in a positive way. This potential circumstance makes them more likely to click on PPC ads.

Due to all social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, have become indispensable in many people’s everyday lives. They therefore offer excellent opportunities for “advertising”. Not in the traditional sense, though, but in much more creative ad formats that are meant to look native to the platform being disguised among organic content.

The difference between social media ads and PPC

Social ads are ads created for and shared on all social media platforms. Depending on the platform, the ads appear on users’ news feeds and, ideally, users will become more familiar with your brand and convert. The clearly designed Facebook ad manager will guide you through the creation of a campaign in which you act strategically and define your goals in the first step. You can create campaigns for Facebook or for Instagram.

Are you currently directing traffic from your PPC clicks only to websites or shops? Yes, that would make the most sense, because you generate the most revenue. Try something different and you may be surprised on the result: promote your social media channels through PPC. For example, make relevant content for your consumers which will lead them to wanting to consume more of your organic content.

This is where all of the success comes into play: with all of these platforms. you build a relationship with your customers and strengthen the image of your brand. The purchase of your product is not yet in the foreground of many people, if they, for example, are not yet familiar (enough) with the brand. However, if you manage to turn these people into fans of your Instagram page, their initial interest in your brand may eventually grow into a decision to make a purchase.

Final thoughts

All in all, we recommend you to ensure their is a cohesiveness between your brand and organic content to your social media ads, and PPC advertising is just as important from a search engine perspective. In addition to paid digital advertising and other digital marketing tips, we will continue to share case studies and the latest digital marketing news and tips to help you drive your business. Our goal is to ensure we help improve your marketing and drive success.

At Onimod Global, we have endless experience and expertise when it comes to all things SEO, general social media advertising, and digital marketing. Got questions about how to develop a paid digital marketing strategy or want to learn more about us? Contact us here today.