Building a new startup is simultaneously exciting and terrifying.

If you've come here, you're likely scrambling for marketing ideas. A startup demands rock-solid business promotion ideas that will net clicks, signups, and, ultimately, sales.

You don't have the revenue to compete with the top dogs in SEO and PPC either. Thankfully, you won't need it (for now).

You need to focus on building a brand personality worth acknowledging. With a bit of innovation and creative thinking, you can get users talking about your product or service.

Here are 20 marketing ideas for small businesses that are sure to kickstart your startup.

1. Brand Yourself in a Unique Way

Some might argue that companies live or die based on their branding.

You and your team may have created the most convenient, innovative product on the market. However, if you're unable to penetrate that market and make audiences recognize your name, no one will ever find out.

For almost any product or service you can think of, there's usually a go-to brand that comes to mind.

For computers, it's Windows.

For cellular phones, it's Apple.

For workplace communications, it's Slack.

The point here illustrates the power of branding. Of course, the brand is ultimately propped up by the power of the product or service. But, would the iPhone be such a household name without Steve Jobs' standout presentation?

Powerful branding starts with a few key areas:

• Brand logo
• Brand slogan/tagline
• Brand voice
• Brand values
• The face of your brand

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A great place to start is scoping out the competition. Analyze each competitor and see how they brand themselves in these key areas. Think about what makes their branding weak and what your team can do better.

In a world full of countless landscaping companies, don't be another cookie-cutter Bob's Landscaping. Be bold and be different to stand out from the start.

2. Grant Exclusive Early Access

If there's anything that grants as much attention as free, it's exclusive.

Countless companies have successfully gathered attention quickly and efficiently by offering exclusive access. This works for your startup as a whole or for introducing new products or services into the marketplace.

Earlier this year, DevriX wrote about how some startups used this very same strategy to gain attention.

The strategy has also been used by juggernaut companies like PayPal, Slack, and Google to incredible effect.

The psychology at work here is that people always seem to want what others can't have. A more recent example of this is when Activision Blizzard, Inc. shared exclusive beta access to their upcoming title Overwatch 2 with carefully selected Twitch influencers.

There was an added caveat in this campaign as regular viewers could gain exclusive access by watching streamed content for two hours.

The result? Activision Blizzard shattered viewership records with over 1.5 million concurrent viewers. For a relatively small investment, they instantly generated mass interest in their upcoming launch.

The amount of activity and number of beta signups does not necessarily mean your startup will be a success, but it succeeds in grabbing much-needed attention. Whether or not your brand will take off depends on the quality of your offerings.

Finally, exclusive betas offer your team the added benefit of collecting valuable marketing and quality control data. You can use your average beta experience and feedback to further improve your startup before the official launch.

3. Get Involved in Public Forums

A great rule to follow in digital marketing? Get involved with your audience.

This remains a great practice from startup to becoming an established, household name.

The primary reason for this is that it establishes authenticity with the average consumer. For startup owners, it also allows you to bring attention to your brand in a very natural, appealing manner.

This doesn't mean that you should create a Reddit account and start spamming various boards with promotions. Doing so will, at best, alienate everyday Redditors, and, at worse, get you banned immediately.

Instead, you need to use these public forums like an actual user.

Start by browsing the threads that relate to what your brand has to offer. With some careful research, you're likely to stumble upon conversations between everyday consumers that talk about:

• The problems they are facing in areas relevant to your offerings
• The problems they have with a competitor’s product/service
• The features they want from a new company

Should your brand happen to appeal to that need, let those people know that your brand offers what they need. Don't be salesy or pushy, simply give them the information they need to help themselves.

Also, like beta testing, conversing with your target audience online can help you better understand their everyday problems and needs. This sets your startup for better positioning when it comes to achieving better marketing results.

4. Seek Out Users That Are Unsatisfied with Competitor Platforms

This business marketing strategy relates directly to the previous tip.

However, instead of sticking strictly to forums, you can seek out target audiences on other platforms to evangelize your brand.

You can seek out these users on any platform that features content based on your industry or one of your competitors. This might include sites like YouTube, Google Reviews, Yelp, Quora, and others.

Your startup is specifically looking for users that are expressing dissatisfaction with the quality of a product or experience with a service. Take the time to understand their concerns and position yourself to explain why your new startup offers a better long-term solution.

5. Host Giveaways with Industry-Relevant Products

While one of our previous tips talked about the power of exclusivity, this tip focuses on the power of free goods.

You can quickly drive signups and referrals simply by hosting a giveaway for a desirable product or service.

While some brands have found success giving away things like iPods or computers, we find it best to focus on something central to your offerings.

While giving away a brand-new laptop to the audience will drive form submissions, there's a great chance that many of those will not be qualified prospects. In other words, just about anyone is willing to give up their email address to save a few hundred dollars. They don't need to have any interest in your startup.

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For example, a new coffee brand startup might give away an expensive, high-end coffee maker. Meanwhile, a computer company might give away a free upgrade to Windows Professional Edition.

There are other ways to get creative with your giveaways such as giving away subscriptions to your very own startup. Not only do users get something free, but you ensure that they continue engaging with your brand for continued conversions.

6. Give Away Credit to Help Users Get Started

This option can be more costly and risky compared to other alternatives.

However, this tactic has proven effective for many companies, particularly in finance. Virtually every credit card provider offers intro cash offers, like Wells Fargo's Active Cash which grants $200 when you spend $1,000 over three months.

PayPal also offered $10 when users receive their first QR code and another $10 reward after completing five payments. This incentive made it even more appealing for users to create a free QR code and start using it for transactions.

These types of offers can help users side with your startup when comparing their options. When many brands position themselves with the same offerings and price points, bonus incentives like this can make the decision much easier.

While it may be more costly upfront to use this tactic, it can pay off dividends when all of those potential prospects sign up with your platform over the competitor.

Furthermore, using a credit reward system incentivizes those users to continue using your brand after they create their new account.

7. Form Partnerships with Established Brands

Trying to get your unknown property in the limelight is tough when you're on your own.

But, what if a brand that audiences already know shared some of the spotlight?

Brand partnerships happen for a specific purpose - to introduce new audiences to each brand. However, your startup's offerings will need to be relevant to the partner brand's audience for this to be worthwhile.

A great example of such a partnership is Apple's collaboration with American Express, MasterCard, and Visa. This was to promote the new Apple Pay functionality, which would allow users to easily apply their credit with their phone.

Likewise, these credit card companies would highlight the Apple Pay integration when applying for and using your issued card. This introduced both parties to new services that are immediately relevant to one another.

While your startup doesn't have the star power of these companies, the marketing principles still apply.

Carefully consider which brands could both help and benefit from a partnership with you. Work on your pitch to those companies and make the effort to reach out.

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8. Create Content That Breaks the Mold

Few things help startups catch fire like a viral marketing campaign. There are countless examples to show for it.

If you're a man that spent time online in the 2010s, you've likely seen Dollar Shave Club's Our Blades Are F***ing Great viral video. What was a small startup exploded overnight and now sees its products sold online and in general stores like Target and Wal-Mart.

While IHOP is a much more established brand, many likely remember its fake name change from a few years ago. What initially caused laughter and disbelief online led to a surge in sales across all locations.

While achieving virality is often a crapshoot, there are key characteristics that this type of content has in common.

The primary characteristic is that it is wildly different than content seen by similar brands. Many companies tend to portray a more reserved, professional tone. The intention is to show a level of seriousness and authenticity in the way they prepare their product or service.

However, campaigns like the Dollar Shave Club show there is great power in defying those expectations. Instead, we have a short, sweet ad that uses brash language and speaks directly to the everyday man.

The upset in expectations also leads to another strong factor - humor. Users are way more likely to identify with and remember something that made them feel a positive way.

With your new startup, audiences do not expect anything from your brand. They do, however, have preconceived notions about competitors. Use your introduction to the scene to take advantage of this and force users to pay attention.

Don't be afraid to take chances. Be bold, test the results, and keep trying new things.

9. Attend Events Regularly

Though much of our marketing now takes place online, trade shows and events are still relevant.

Even if these types of gatherings do not connect you to the end-user, they can still prove effective in promoting your startup.

Chances are that representatives from other established companies will be present at key events. They also present guests with the opportunity to network and learn about new brands, products, and services that are coming up in the industry. Make sure to share your smart business cards that will help you effectively network and generate leads.

You'll want someone with an outgoing, charismatic personality to represent your startup in these situations. This person might end up becoming the permanent face of your brand as other industry leaders will remember personal connections with that person in the early days of your company.

Even if you don't knock it out of the park with these meetings, you take the first steps in speaking your brand's name in a public setting.

The next time you have the opportunity to pitch your startup to someone of note, there's a good chance you'll be a known quantity instead of a nobody.

10. Give Away Branded Merchandise

Another way to promote brand recognition at those events is to give away physical goods with your name on them.

Examples can include t-shirts, stickers, cards, tote bags, pens, or anything else that might be of everyday use. You could even design t-shirts so it's more memorable.

Even if the recipient ends up not using your merch, you'll achieve success by reminding them of your brand once more when they revisit your gift.

Likewise, something like a pen can slowly fix your startup's name in someone's mind as they continue to use it for everyday activities.

Branded merchandise can act serve as anything from a conversation starter to turning others into walking billboards for your startup. Most merch can prove relatively inexpensive to manufacture, especially when made in bulk.

11. Use STP Marketing

STP marketing stands for the following:

• Segmentation
• Targeting
• Positioning

Segmenting your audience in digital marketing is a practice you will use now until you stop working in business and marketing.

Audience segmentation allows you to differentiate your whole audience into several distinct groups. This then allows you to better target and position yourself to market to those groups' particular needs.

According to a Statista study, 93% of U.S. internet users claimed to receive marketing content that is irrelevant to their needs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 93% of B2B marketers attributed revenue growth to the creation of customer-personalized content.

Not only does STP marketing better aid you in creating this personalized content, but it also helps startups use limited marketing funds more efficiently.

You will obtain more high-quality leads from your spending and ultimately end up with a superior ROI.

12. Offer Social Proof by Using Your Own Product or Service

Businesses exist to make a profit.

While all customers are aware of this, we still tend to gravitate toward brands that we believe to be authentic or concerned about our interests.

The more trustworthy a brand appears, the more likely we are to believe its product or service is of superior quality.

You can speak to the outstanding quality of your startup's offerings by becoming your own number one fan and user.

In other words, don't just tell audiences about how great your offerings are. Demonstrate examples of your team using them regularly along with the positive results. If it's working for you and making your startup more well known, then the benefits can no longer be denied.

Social proof is paramount when selling anything online. Nearly 90% of buyers will research a product and review it before making a decision.

While customer reviews are more trustworthy, you can slice away doubt by demonstrating that you also benefit from what you wish to sell to others.

13. Ask the Audience How You Can Improve

Garnering feedback from your audience and customers is essential for business success. After all, the saying is the customer is always right.ā

While that may not always be entirely accurate, learning about your customer's experiences is important. As the people who use your product or service regularly, they'll be the best suited to speak to the shortcomings you can improve upon.

There are numerous ways to ask for feedback. Some brands will automatically provide users with an option to rate and review after making a purchase.

For service-oriented platforms, you can set up automated notifications to trigger after the user spends X amount of time making use of the service.

Finally, you can send out personalized emails asking for such feedback. Be sure to thank the customers that convert early for your startup, and ask them how you can improve the service to help even more customers.

14. Converse with Your Audience on Social

This tip takes communicating with your audience to the next level.

Social media is an active, everchanging area with nearly 4 billion users worldwide across all platforms.

The sheer volume of activity that happens daily has changed a variety of industries. These platforms are no longer just for sharing funny videos with friends, but now serve a variety of purposes.

Platforms like Facebook or Twitter can act as news timelines, provide groups for like-minded individuals, and allows brands like yours to promote new services.

When you bring your startup on social media, you allow yourself to connect with both existing customers and prospects. You can also network with others in your industry so that both parties can mutually benefit from the shared exposure.

Not only is social media an excellent way to boost brand awareness, but it also allows you to share your content in a way that promotes a feeling of authenticity.

Rather than promoting ads from the outside, creating a personal voice that actively participates allows users to recognize the people behind your startup as opposed to being another faceless, for-profit brand.

15. Implement a Referral Program

Studies suggest that someone who is referred to your brand by a friend is 30% more likely to convert. Those same customers are 4x as likely to pay the referral forward than someone that discovered your brand on their own.

Social proof and word-of-mouth recommendations are paramount for driving conversions. It's the reason why we research, look for reviews, and ask family members for recommendations.

If someone we know and trust had a great experience, then we easily believe we will also have a similar one.

For this reason, your startup's early adopters may be your best tool for bringing in new customers.

You can incentivize your existing customers to do this by introducing a referral program. A great example of this is MeUndie's referral reward program, which works like this:

• An existing customer invites friends with their unique referral link
• The new prospect opens the link and purchases at least $12
• The initial referring customer gets a $20 credit added to their account

The customer can continue referring new customers to get a maximum of 25, $20 credits. They essentially pay their loyal customers for actively marketing their brand to new people.

Referral programs generally have great success rates. Those that are happy with your startup's offerings are generally willing to share their positive experience with others. When you throw in an added reward for their efforts, it makes referring your brand a no-brainer.

16. Send Personal Follow Ups and Reminders

With how competitive digital marketing is, capturing a prospect's attention is difficult. However, evidence suggests that keeping their attention is even harder.

Think of each new lead as being on a temperature scale. When a lead is hot and fresh, they're far more likely to engage. Data purports that you may be 100x more likely to connect with a hot lead than a cold one.

How long can you consider a lead to be hot? Some of the top marketers suggest that you have just five minutes before conversion rates begin to nosedive.

That's why it's important for all businesses, especially new startups, to proactively send personalized emails and texts to follow up with leads.

Earlier in this article, we talked about the power of personalized messaging with STP marketing. The same rules apply when it comes to converse with the individual customer.

When a new lead comes through a campaign, they get added to your sales pipeline. However, many brands make the mistake of sending out one generalized email to all of these recipients. Chances are, the user sees this vague email in their inbox and ignores it, deletes it, or relegates it to spam.

Instead of sending users an email that looks like this:

Thanks for your interest in BUSINESS NAME.

What if you sent one that looked like this:

Hey Thomas, thanks for checking out our new service. We appreciate your support and would like to chat with you soon.

First off, you immediately grab their attention simply by recognizing their name. You then follow up by reminding them of where the message is coming from and what exactly it relates to. The prospect immediately has context and feels appreciated as an individual.

Your sales reps can achieve this by taking the time to write out messages manually. However, DashClicks offers sophisticated solutions for this problem within our platform.

Our Deals app allows you to create and schedule an entire sales pipeline. This will track leads as they first enter your system until the final sale.

The impressive part here is that when a lead enters a deal stage, you can design unique automation to trigger. You could send out this type of welcome email instantly without any additional input.

Furthermore, our messaging allows you to instantly personalize pre-written texts and emails with user information. The software automatically pulls details like names, numbers, business associations, and much more.

17. Tell Customer Stories

Much like with referrals, nothing sells a brand quite like relatable success stories.

When you reach out to your startup's early adopters, don't just look exclusively for information that benefits you. Take the time to interview your customers and chart their journey from the beginning to settling on your brand.

Then, ask clients if they're comfortable with you sharing their stories online. Let them know that their experiences can help illustrate the effectiveness of your product or service to others in similar situations.

While it's your team that chooses how to present the story, new prospects will simply see a solid sales pitch from someone unassociated with the company. This makes them far more likely to trust the advocation, and, in turn, more likely to convert.

18. Send Invites to Industry Influencers

Influencer marketing is on the rise.

You can’t click on a YouTube video or live stream without seeing the content creator pausing to promote a product or service. Here’s how it works.

The company with the product or service reaches out to an influencer that shares a common audience with them. They then offer the influencer an agreed-upon payment to promote their offerings to their audience for a defined period. The influencer will also get free access to the product or service to use it firsthand before agreeing to any advertisements.

For the influencer, the payout is generally worthwhile. For the sponsoring company, the cost is insignificant when compared to the amount of potential new leads you can acquire.

The influencer marketing industry is expected to reach about $16.4 billion in spending in 2022.

The psychology behind the power of influencer marketing is simple. Many of our tips above speak to the power of social proof. When we trust someone’s opinion, we’re more likely to purchase what they suggest.

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Influencers have that same power. Though we don’t know these people personally, we associate positive traits with them because we enjoy their content. Therefore, if they were to recommend a product they claim to personally use, we’re more likely to remember that brand when we’re in the market for that item.

Your startup can harness the power of influencer marketing in the same way. If your offering is a service, it costs nothing to send out free invites to key industry players. Simply ask them to write about or record a video that honestly describes their experience with your brand.

That content then goes out to an entirely new audience of people that already trust the person advocating for you.

19. Grant Loyalty Rewards or Gifts with Purchase

You can drive repeat purchases from existing customers, or potentially acquire new ones with this strategy.

When customers are in the market for something, they’re typically researching and weighing several different brand options. To remain competitive, these companies likely have similar offerings starting at near-identical price points.

Offering those customers a little extra incentive can sometimes be enough to sway their purchasing decisions.

Some brands like beauty company Ulta regularly provide customers with free items after reaching certain price thresholds in their cart. The company carefully decides on these limits to ensure they are always making a profit even when giving away quality goods.

If your startup cannot afford to give away free products or lies more in the service industry, a loyalty program can be a great alternative.

Loyalty rewards incentivize customers to continue pursuing business with you. The more money they spend with your brand, the more rewards they get in return. This usually comes in the form of credits that can be used for future discounts.

If a loyalty program is sweet enough, it can also convince discerning prospects to side with your startup over competitor alternatives. After all, why not get rewarded if you’re going to spend money on a service regardless?

20. Reach Out to the Media

Finally, you can try to give your startup a boost by reaching out to media outlets.

This can work for traditional media like magazines or local papers as well as new media online.

Depending on the size of the publication, reporters and journalists are always looking for stories to fill content quotas. A local paper might be interested in giving your startup space to inform the community of your new offerings.

What will likely work even better is to reach out to media outlets that specialize in creating content about your industry. For example, if you’re a startup tech company, you could inform sites like Wired or TechCrunch of what’s to come.

It costs nothing to pitch your startup as a story and can only result in free exposure. Like influencer marketing, getting your startup featured in front of a new audience can be a great way to secure much-needed adopters for your startup.

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Use These Marketing Ideas for Additional Startup Exposure

Launching a startup is difficult, and gaining the exposure you need will require creative thinking and a lot of effort.

Instead of simply throwing money you don’t have at the issue, you need to carefully consider the resources the internet offers in 2022.

Because of the lack of resources, you’ll face early on, it will be all hands on deck to connect leads, influencers, and existing customers online and in person.

Furthermore, don’t give up on leads that turn you away. Respect their decision, remain personable and make the effort to check in on their status at a later date. The more authentic are in regard to their needs, the more likely they are to remember you when the right time comes.

Sustainable business growth is paramount for longevity.

That growth comes as a result of implementing an effective market penetration strategy. Learning how to make more high-quality leads aware of and interested in your brand is how this becomes possible.

The optimal strategy for achieving high market penetration is known as STP marketing.

However, before we get caught up in the details, let's step back and evaluate what these ideas represent. Let's first identify what we mean by market penetration.

What is Market Penetration?

Market penetration refers to the amount of sales transactions that occur between a business and customers that belong to a specific market segment.

That market segment refers to only the customers that exhibit interest or could benefit from the products or services your brand provides.

In other words, your market is not defined by every individual in your area. It only applies to the potential persons that would be in the market for your offerings.

Importance of Market Penetration

Understanding and regularly measuring market penetration is a direct indicator of both your marketing and sales performance.

When more of the market is aware of your brand, the more likely they are to use your company for their needs. If your brand is at a high level of market penetration, they're likely to dominate the mindshare, making other options seem less desirable.

Here are some indicators and benefits of achieving high market penetration:

• Your brand is well-known among your target audience
• You achieve high sales with regularity and are trending toward growth
• You’re capable of opening multiple locations in an area and sustaining each
• Influencers and industry leaders reference your products or services

All of these are the desired goals for any growing brand. However, using market penetration strategies incorrectly can also create undue pressures and strains on your existing operation.

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Now that we better understand market penetration, let's explore how your brand can take action.

You'll learn how to calculate your current level of market penetration and learn about specific STP marketing strategies that can get you better results.

How to Calculate Market Penetration?

We know that market penetration is the relationship of your product's sales in conjunction with all related products a potential customer could buy. Therefore, the equation looks something like this:

Market Penetration = Number of Existing Customers & Sales / Total Possible Customers in the Market x 100

The total possible customers refer to those that specifically qualify for your product. It's important to discern the difference between low-quality leads and high-quality leads for this reason. The resulting percentage indicates how high your penetration rate is.

Juggernaut companies like Amazon boast market penetration rates as high as nearly 60%.

For smaller, local businesses, an average market penetration rate is anywhere between 2% and 6%. Achieving a number higher than this indicates that your brand is already faring better than most across the nation.

However, it also demonstrates just how stiff the competition is for small business owners. It's a difficult situation as resources are tighter for small brands in a scenario where it's already tough to stand out.

It can feel hopeless, if not impossible, for your new brand to succeed.

The good news is that you don't need to let these figures intimidate you. What you need is a powerful market penetration strategy using STP marketing.

In the next step, let's define what STP is so that you can leverage it in your local and digital marketing.

What is STP in Marketing?

STP is now the gold standard for digital marketing.

Rather than wasting time and resources appealing to a wide consumer base, STP marketing carefully directs efforts to highly-qualified prospects.

The acronym STP stands for:

Segmentation

Segmentation, in marketing, is the process of dividing an established audience into distinct segments.

While your entire audience shares a mutual interest in your offerings, sections of the audience can be effectively classified through different characteristics.

This information becomes valuable as it allows you to better understand why specific individuals come to your brand.

For example, a computer company can have success selling its computer products to almost any demographic. However, an 18-year college student and gamer will benefit from different selling points than a 35-year old office manager.

Targeting

By segmenting these customers into different groups, you can determine which groups are worth targeting.

This is especially important for smaller brands that may currently lack the resources to capitalize on every possible segment. Instead, you can review your existing marketing and sales data to determine which segments demonstrate a better ROI.

However, it's worth making note of other possible segments to pursue as your brand begins to scale.

Positioning

Now that you've created your segments and narrowed your targeting, it's time to position yourself for success.

Understanding your target segment allows your team to create highly-personalized ad campaigns. The better your proposition speaks to the unique needs of the prospect, the more likely you are to drive conversions.

A beautiful aspect of STP marketing is that it is proven to benefit any business regardless of size or industry. As marketing becomes increasingly competitive, bespoke advertisements will always yield better results than minimal, generalized efforts.

Effective Market Penetration Strategies (with STP Marketing)

Market penetration is a relatively safe, effective strategy for every brand. The primary reason for this is that it allows you to move in on audiences that you've already established.

This is, as compared, to diversifying your audiences and/or products, which can often have unpredictable results.

Instead, these market penetration strategies should help you connect with more qualified customers and reinforce relationships with existing ones for continued transactions.

1. Personalized Marketing Campaigns

For starters, we're leaning into the ideas discussed when introducing STP marketing.

Your ad campaigns thus far have landed your brand its current customer base. While your efforts are connecting with these individuals, they're not quite pushing audience segments to convert.

To further your market penetration, you can begin to explore those audience segments that are still on the outside looking in. We recommend utilizing marketing analytics tools like Google Analytics to study audience behaviors.

You can use tools like these to analyze your ads, landing pages, sales funnels, and more. Determine which part of your pitch is causing customers to drop off, and begin to rethink your approach.

Instead of having one campaign for a large audience, start to develop highly-personalized campaigns that speak to specific demographics. This will position you to speak better to the problems they face and explain why your brand is the solution.

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Not only will this grab their attention, but it also allows your brand to cut through the noisy competition by offering something unique and special.

2. Reconsider Your Pricing

We specifically mention pricing only as increasing OR decreasing your prices could be beneficial. Whichever action you choose to take depends upon careful research of your target audience.

The price of your products and services can communicate a great deal of information to a prospect before you even make your pitch.

A product marked above the industry average might communicate that your brand cares about maximizing profits over the consumer. However, with careful marketing, it can also communicate that your product is simply of better quality when compared to competitors. This may boost conversions with the right audience simply to gain access to superior goods.

On the other hand, intelligently lowering your prices can make your products accessible to new audience segments. Slashing prices, so long as it doesn't harm your bottom line, can instantly improve your market penetration.

Be aware that lowering prices can also create the opposite perception of raising them. If consumers see that you're comfortable with lowering the value, it can lead them to believe that your goods are of subpar quality.

3. Introduce New Products or Update Existing Ones

To sell more of your product or service, you need to satisfy all of the customer's needs.

Those needs include:

• Features
• Build quality
• Price point
• Warranty / protection

If your product fails to meet any one of these standards, you're likely to lose a potential sale. The same is also true if a competitor has a similar product that exceeds your standards of yours.

In this scenario, you have a couple of options. The first is to consider the features your products lack and consider how you can create a superior model.

A second option is to introduce a new product into your offerings.

A great example of this is Apple's iPhone - one of the most popular products in the mobile tech world.

They recently released the iPhone 13 which features all of the latest upgrades to display, memory, and camera functionality. However, it retails for $999, which is a hefty price point considering that new ones appear each year.

Understanding cost is a barrier to market penetration, they introduced another low-cost model known as the iPhone SE. This product costs only $429 in comparison. Of course, it lacks in features and build quality in comparison. This is the trade-off made to protect the bottom line.

However, having this affordable option suddenly makes iPhones more accessible to the greater market. Furthermore, consumers feel empowered by having options and the ability to choose what's best for their needs.

Finally, having different options negates the potential drawback of altering base prices. Consumers that want to pay a premium for a superior product still have that option available.

4. Introduce Referral / Loyalty Programs

A great way to boost brand awareness and market penetration is to empower your existing customers to help.

Many brands institute referral programs that provide the customer with rewards or discounts for every new customer they bring to your brand. It's an easy sell as existing customers can already speak to your brand positives, while also getting a small reward for minimal effort. Positive word of mouth from trusted sources can help push prospects to convert.

Likewise, you can further boost that engagement and loyalty by rewarding customers that shop regularly. Brands like Best Buy offer points for each dollar spent, which can then be converted into discounts.

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5. Position Your Sales Reps for Success

Your marketing team may be doing a great job of attracting new leads.

However, having more leads than your sales team can handle may cause you to lose customers permanently.

Having an effective sales management system is essential for boosting market penetration and achieving business growth. DashClicks' own Inbound software is an excellent example of this.

The Inbound tool allows you to quickly integrate all of your marketing campaigns into one dashboard. Filter all of your leads from Facebook, ClickFunnels, and CallRail, for easy access.

With all of your leads in one place, you can automatically:

• Assign leads to sales reps by campaign or round-robin style
• Track close rates by campaign/channel
• Track close rates by sales rep
• Track time to respond to new leads
• Reassign sales reps at any time

All of these features ensure that you capitalize on fresh leads by giving them immediate attention. Your analytics will demonstrate the areas in which your team requires improvement.

Furthermore, DashClicks offers the ability to automate emails and text messages within the same platform. This way, even if a rep is unable to manually communicate at a given stage, you can trigger personalized messages to go out regardless.

6. Expand Mark eting Efforts to New Channels

Finally, making the effort to reach new audiences through different means can help boost market penetration.

Paid ads on platforms like Facebook and Google are some of the more common digital marketing methods. However, not all potential prospects are interested in clicking on ads or reading landing pages.

Social media is a popular marketing channel that's often neglected by smaller businesses. An estimated 7/10 U.S. residents use at least one social media platform in 2022. Instead of working to get everyone on your website, brands should make the effort to reach the market where they spend most of their time.

Consider all of the options you aren't currently using and determine how they might help boost your market penetration. Other channels we recommend are:

• Email marketing
• Content marketing
• Influencer marketing

Implement Market Penetration Strategies to Grow Sustainably

Market penetration is essential for brands that seek continued growth and longevity. It allows you to continuously pursue the individuals whom you already know to be in the market for your offerings.

Understanding and utilizing STP marketing will universally boost the effectiveness of all of your marketing efforts. Likewise, making key adjustments that are appropriate for your brand and offerings may suddenly make your products and services accessible to new audiences.

The best part is that all of these strategies are relatively low-risk and low-cost to implement. Select the right strategies, test and measure results, and continuously refine your efforts until you perfect the process.

Welcome to DashClicks' Digital Marketing Training Sessions. Today's training session is about using TikTok to get inbound leads. My name is Daniel, and this training session is based on my personal experience of generating leads using TikTok. TikTok is an emerging short video platform that has set a benchmark for all other social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

We will discuss the entire process of using TikTok to generate inbound leads. It will help you build your brand from scratch within a shoestring budget.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch exclusive training sessions on digital marketing. The channel also hosts the Whiteboard Wednesday series, where Chad Kodary, the CEO of DashClicks, shares tips on how to run a digital agency successfully in a highly competitive market.

So, without further ado, let's dive in.

TikTok has grown out of its old image as a short video platform known for teenage dancing girls' clips. Some people still look at it that way, but the platform has come quite far. Whatever be the truth, TikTok has revolutionized the social media world.

Today's training session is based on our real-life experience and includes proven tips to generate inbound leads.

However, you need some buffer period to grow your account on TikTok. In the meantime, you might encounter some uncomfortable situations. You might also need to do a few things you have never done before and walk through rocky terrain.

The Salient Features of TikTok

There are multiple ways you can attract inbound leads on TikTok, but let's discuss its salient features first.

1. High Engagement

The platform is designed to interact with your followers and other content creators in a way that no other platform does. That's the reason it has a very high rate of engagement.

Source: DashClicks Training Sessions ā 01:35

2. Acts as a Search Engine for Short Videos

Apart from that, TikTok is also emerging as a search engine. They have also increased the character count of a video description from 120 to 500. It implies that your content stands a chance to rank based on various text strings used in the video title, description and hashtags.

For example, if you love “smoking ribs” and use a search query “smoking rib recipes,” you’ll get a 15 second video on the topic rather than long tutorials on YouTube. It’s much better and more time-saving if you want a quick understanding of the topic.

Whenever a social media platform gets bigger, it soon becomes a search engine, and TikTok is no exception.

3. Allows You to Respond to Questions via Videos

On TikTok, you can interact with content creators and people in your audience by responding to comments or questions via your video. Your response showcases your expertise. TikTok uses a content library for this purpose where anyone can ask questions.

For example, if you post a TikTok video and share three ways to increase your conversion rate on your website, you might get a question like, “Do you really mean this?” You can take this opportunity to respond to the question and increase engagement.

4. Provides A Massive Platform

TikTok started as a dancing video platform, but now it’s flooded with customers. It’s an anomaly that grew too fast, just like a black swan event.

It was so much so that every major social media platform is now copying it in the form of “reels” and “IdeaPins” and scrollable short videos. It’s creating waves. People love this platform and the way they interact with each other on it.

5. Has More Searchable Content

TikTok has now moved to searchable content using hashtags and location factors. Apart from these, searchable elements in your content also include sounds. When you click on “music” below a video, it will list all the videos that use the same music. With so many search parameters, finding your content has become comparatively more straightforward.

People are also using the platform for education, and it’s indeed a fantastic place for learning.

Your TikTok Checklist

Here’s your TikTok checklist for getting started. After that, we can move on to the strategy.

1. Focus more on benefiting your audience
2. Use the content to become the go-to expert in the field
3. Post frequently and regularly
4. Pick a specific topic (such as marketing, sales, NFTs)
5. Educate through entertainment
6. Engage and connect with like-minded individuals
7. Make sure you are posting quality content that offers value and is engaging

Content is the soul of social media and every other online marketing vertical you can think of. Your audience should love the content you create. It should offer value, address people’s pain points, and entice them enough to click the video and watch it fully.

Source: DashClicks Training Sessions ā 07:02

Your content should be shareable to offer value. TikTok offers you tons of ways to share your videos. Cross-platform promotion is one such way that can also make your videos go viral. TikTok doesn't provide you with a shortened URL or a link while sharing it. Instead, it shares the whole video across other platforms. People love to share good content, and TikTok's easy shareability contributes to its popularity and success in a big way. You can easily find TikTok videos in Instagram reels, etc.

Pro Tip #1: Focus more on education and offering value while creating content. Avoid sales pitches and aggressive direct promotion on TikTok. Let your content answer people's queries and address their pain points.

Pro Tip #2: Push forward the narrative of benefiting the audience and always try to add value through your content. You should keep the number of salesy videos to a minimum.

Pro Tip #3: Use content to become a go-to expert in your field. It will help you prove your credibility.

When you successfully establish yourself as a go-to expert, you appear in more related searches and people's feeds. When the masses watch your videos and follow you, more and more people share your content. This way, your content is multiplied and distributed across numerous communities.

Source: DashClicks Training Sessions ā 12:29

What to Do?

TikTok is a different social media platform, but not difficult to learn and use to drive results from. To succeed on TikTok, you need to do the following things.

1. Learn the Platform

Jump on the bandwagon. Don’t worry about messing it up, as you always have an option to delete it. Just try to learn the platform. The earlier you start, the better you will get at it and receive more rewards.

2. Start Conversations

Leave comments that trigger conversation on relevant content. If you haven’t posted a single video yet, you might be a bit anxious about doing it. It can be nerve-wracking at first, but you need to take the plunge. Check your customer’s profile first. Are they landscapers or eCommerce business owners? Now, find a piece of content and comment on it. It can be a question or any other form of a conversation starter.

For example, you can say, “Hey! So, I have a startup, and we have had some challenges, but we came through. You might be wondering, how did we overcome those challenges?”

The idea is to start a conversation so that they respond to you. It will bring you under the spotlight, prompting other users to ask you questions. When you answer their questions, you build credibility and exhibit your expertise. It will also increase engagement.

3. Target Your Customers

Target your existing customers. Start comments and conversations. It will attract people’s attention. You can quickly build your brand and establish yourself as an expert by offering value, sharing insights, and building credibility. Also try to reel in people who comment on your content and send you DMs to become your leads.

4. Target People in Your Field and Interact With Their Content

You should also target people who do the same thing as you or are in the same niche. It gives you visibility in front of the masses and newer audiences. We have successfully got leads from people who commented on our content. We responded, and then they told us that they needed help. We have also got leads from people who sent a DM to us. Many of them wanted to work with us. It was all due to the content that we publish frequently. It builds credibility and showcases our expertise. People ask questions via comments on our videos, which we use as an opportunity to close one or two prospects.

Pro Tip: Leads will come from the content you produce.

5. Establish Your Expertise

The time and effort spent on creating high-quality videos ultimately establishes your expertise and increases your credibility. You get leads by responding to people’s comments. But, how do you make these leads into potential prospects and get business from them? Here are three ways you can do so!

• Get Leads by Responding to Comments to Resolve People’s Issues
  Sometimes people convey their issues through the comments and seek insights because you have created content on similar topics. Experts take this as an opportunity and create videos on the same.Responding to their comment, they warmly say, “Hey! Thanks for the comment. Here is what I recommend you do to resolve your problem.” And then they add the link to the video they have created for the same. We also use such occasions as an opportunity to network and establish relationships.
• Get Leads From People DMing You
  The content you create adds credibility and helps you establish your expertise. When people see these insights, they try to contact you through comments, DMs, or phone calls. When someone sends you a direct message, you can reply, “I would like to work with you. Could we discuss this over a call?” You can also implement this strategy for your customers.
• Get Leads From Questions People Ask Under Your Video
  There are many questions people ask when you post your video. You should take this opportunity to answer these questions. There are high chances that these people will become your prospects.

Pro Tip: Stick with this practice and be consistent.

The best inbound leads I’ve ever received have been from podcasts, and the best place to get on podcasts is through TikTok, besides some occasional invites from here and there. That is why you should connect with people with the same interests and field. For example, they can be sales experts or marketing experts.

Source: DashClicks Training Sessions ā 14:12

Every podcast I’m currently on has been found from outreach on TikTok. It proves how much visibility you get when you are on TikTok. When you follow people from a specific niche or profession and interact with their content, there are two primary benefits you’ll get:

• You’ll get to know similar people
• Similar experts will pop up in your feed

So if you are a digital marketer, you might see the content of a growth expert XYZ pop up in your feed. They might have similar content to you, and in fact, you might use some of their ideas to build your content.

However, that’s another story.

Taking Your Newly Built Relationships to the Next Level

This way, both of you can see each other’s content, get familiar, and start interacting with each other. You build a relationship, add comments on each other’s content, and start sharing a great camaraderie.

So, you build relationships well through TikTok. You may find that your contact also hosts a podcast when that happens. So, when they post a podcast clip, you might comment and say, “Hey XYZ! I loved the podcast! Can I be on your podcast too and share some of my own insights and experiences with your audience?“

More likely than not, you’re going to receive a positive response from them as they are also from the same field, and it will benefit both of you mutually.

I created my first podcast this way. I built this relationship through commenting, and when I coined the idea of starting a podcast together, my contact immediately agreed.

The podcast that I sourced using TikTok and relations made through the platform opened the floodgates of leads for me.

TikTok offers tremendous opportunities similar to this if you are consistent. The procedure is simple:

• Pick a specific niche
• Offer value and build your credibility by posting quality content
• Answer questions posted by people to gravitate them towards you

So, if you do it consistently, people will reach out to you and would express their interest in working with you.

In less than six months of practicing it consistently, I have created my own fan following, starting from scratch.

Building Relationships With the Experts

The second way is to build relationships with experts in your field. They’ll see your content, and if you consistently post content that offers value, they will start enjoying it and might even reach out to build a relationship.

You can create a podcast together and distribute it through TikTok. People who follow or listen to this podcast may contact you as your TikTok account name and contact details will be shared with the podcast.

Again, appearing in podcasts increases your credibility, establishes your expertise on TikTok, and ultimately leads to inbound lead generation.

It is by far the best platform that delivers results in this fashion. TikTok is a little easier and more manageable as you can easily set it up, and things work on autopilot if you are consistent.

Final Words

TikTok is known for entertaining content that focuses on interaction with people in an engaging way. The platform is designed in such a way that it encourages engagement and relationship building. It works with an AI-based feed system that provides you with the content you love to consume. If you compare it with YouTube, TikTok is more engaging and user-friendly. Comments and video responses encourage interaction.

I hope you found this training session helpful. It worked extraordinarily well for me. Let me know if you have any questions. Ensure you subscribe to our channel and hit the bell icon for notifications if you want more of such sessions.

You are also welcome to suggest future topics in the comments section.

I’ll see you in the next training session. Until then!

Welcome to episode ten of Whiteboard Wednesday. In this episode, Chad Kodary, CEO of DashClicks, discusses how to create YouTube video content that will drive tons of traffic to your website.

Today, you’ll learn:

1. How to get tons of traffic from YouTube
2. How to flood YouTube with videos
3. How to convert that traffic into paying customers

The YouTube Strategy

Every time you shoot a video and publish it on YouTube, that video stays onYouTube forever. We have videos that we shot five years ago and they are still generating traffic. Here is a secret that I would like to share. If you are serious at video marketing, you should post quality video content and it should be your prime concern.

It should compel people to hit the like and share buttons and leave a comment if needed. Outstanding videos prompt visitors to subscribe to your YouTube channel. Your YouTube channel will act like a winning content marketing machine if you can fuse quality with quantity.

An Easy Formula to Flood the Web With Tons of Videos

Make quality videos that bring tons of traffic, conversions, and ultimately loads of revenue to your business. However, it’s easier said than done. Most people don’t even dare to start it as they have several misconceptions about creating quality video content. Most business owners think they need to have the following to make quality videos:

• Heavy ad spend to make it a success
• A big team of professionals
• Expensive equipment

However, the truth is far from it. All you need is a webcam, an Internet connection, a YouTube account, and a little bit of time. That’s all you really need to make quality videos.

So, let’s talk about strategy.

How to Shoot Videos in Bulk?

Today, I’m shooting a quality video, and I’m confident that it will receive lots of love from YouTube and my audience.

But I’m not talking about shooting a video once in a blue moon. My objective is to make it a routine practice, so you can produce bulk videos every single week and reap their unmatched rewards.

At the outset, it appears pretty hard. But remember, you can shoot the videos for the whole week in just two to three hours.

We successfully do it at DashClicks. I’ll explain here how you can do it for your business too.

We can split our week into weekdays and create different video series for each day so it doesn’t become monotonous and boring.

For example, at DashClicks, we have different video series such as Whiteboard Wednesday, Marketers’ Mindset podcast, DashClicks Demos, Agency Accelerator Summit, DashDay and Dash University, etc.

It allows us to create a string of YouTube videos that go live on specific days and times, every week or day. It’s up to you to decide the frequency.

You can create a playlist on YouTube and incorporate a calendar to this end.

For example, you can pick a day such as Monday or Tuesday. Weekends are an option too, but you should set a goal to ensure regular content production. My goal at DashClicks is to produce 20 new YouTube videos every month.

Pro Tip: Create a playlist on YouTube and take the help of calendar functions.

Pro Tip: You should condense your video content to not bore your audience with overly long videos.

Pro Tip: Set monthly video production goals.

Source: Ep. 10 – 05:20

Very few people would want to watch a three-hour-long webinar. They would instead prefer to watch a 10-minute video on a specific topic. Make sure that you produce quality content similar to the one we have created for the current topic.

Try Different Formats and Keep Your Audience Hooked

On Wednesdays, we post our Whiteboard Wednesday episodes, and on the rest of the weekdays, we post videos from different series. It keeps our viewers excited. We try many variations, such as an interview-style podcast, a mini webinar in a webinar format with a slide deck, and an excellent whiteboard session.

The sweet spot for the video content is 10 to 15 minutes. The other considerations may include fantastic titles. Look at the title of this blog.

“How to Create a YouTube Content Machine That Drives Insane Traffic.”

Today, I’ll shoot five of these Whiteboard Wednesday videos, and I will have the content ready for the next five weeks. We keep the video length at around 15 minutes max, so in two hours, I can create content for the next five weeks.

If I do that again the next day, I’ll get additional content for the next four weeks. I usually do this in batches of four weeks each as it’s the easiest way to do it. Today, I’ll shoot four such videos. If I do it every week, I’ll have 20 videos ready for YouTube marketing.

As I discussed above, we choose different formats for these videos, such as webinars, Whiteboard, interview videos, podcasts, etc.

Pro Tip: Have fun making such videos, but make sure you offer top quality. Nobody’s going to watch your videos if they lack quality.

Although quantity also matters in the long run, quality is supreme, and you can’t survive on YouTube without offering quality content to the audience.

Pro Tip: Create a posting schedule and segment your video series. Then, further segment those series by playlists to make it easier for your audience to find the videos they like.

How to Segment Your Videos?

Suppose it’s Wednesday, and we shot four videos for a specific playlist, Whiteboard Wednesday, and dumped all four videos there. Keep a set of thumbnails ready, as it’s crucial for YouTube videos. To create eye-catching thumbnails, you can use Canva.com.

Source: Ep. 10 – 08:16

You can create a template for the series so the next time, you’ll just need to change the text on the thumbnail.

This way, people will be able to recognize that thumbnail template with that series. For example, our subscribers know that it’s a Whiteboard Wednesday video just by looking at its thumbnail.

Pro Tip: Use attractive and catchy titles for your videos to use them as clickbait.

Pro Tip: Write a fantastic description of your video in few words. You can also use bullet points to sum up its content.

Marketers also use little segments and timestamps in the video descriptions, so the user can straightaway jump to the part they are most interested in and skip the rest. It’s perfect for usability.

Pro Tip: Use a good CTA (Call to Action) in your videos; otherwise, you won’t achieve much from your videos.

However, ensure to not confuse the visitors with too many links to click. Just focus on something that’s most crucial for you.

For example, here at DashClicks, we want the visitors to sign up to our platform and create their forever free dashboards account.

So, our CTA leads to the sign-up page on our website.

You can also add tags to your youtube videos that are relevant to you and your topic. Please don’t make it oversaturated with too many tags, though. Five to 10 tags are plenty.

Schedule Your Videos

It’s important to schedule your videos according to your content calendar. For example, our whiteboard videos get posted every Wednesday at 1 pm EST. So, I schedule all our other videos every week apart from Wednesdays at 1 pm EST, which are slotted for our Whiteboard Wednesday sessions. Make sure to add the videos to the playlists. It makes them easy to segment.

Customize the homepage of your YouTube channel. It also includes arranging your series and segments.

You can have several series and playlists added to your YouTube channel homepage. This is an excellent way for users to engage with your content and become aware of the multiple series. So, if they land on one of your videos and think it offers value, they’ll subscribe to your channel or even visit your homepage.

Here, they can see all the series that you have created. It will drive traffic to your business forever, or at least till the time your video continues to appear in YouTube’s organic searches. CTAs are used for the same purpose.

Source: Ep. 10 – 13:33

Your subscriber count will increase with more visitors, and you’ll start building a fan base.

It will also drive traffic to your website.

Final Words

To sum up, follow these pro tips to ensure marketing success on YouTube.

Pro Tip: Quality is the secret to success. Pay attention to quality and not just quantity.

Pro Tip: Avoid killing your time shooting the videos for the whole day. Shoot and schedule the videos in batches to make the most of the YouTube algorithm.

The best practice is to do this once a week, an hour or two a day.

If you liked this video and its format, Subscribe to our YouTube channel. We have tons of video content on agency training and digital marketing. Learn practical tips from the people who have hands-on experience in digital marketing and running a digital agency.

With this, we sign off on today’s Whiteboard Wednesday session. I hope our sessions are adding value and helping you in becoming a successful digital marketing agency.

Press the bell icon to be the first to watch these valuable tips every Wednesday.

Please leave your comments below, and if you are happy with this session, feel free to leave some positive feedback here to encourage us!

See you in the next session of Whiteboard Wednesday. Have a fantastic day!

Any business owner that ventures a look online is aware of SEO.

Understanding what effective SEO strategies are and how to implement them is a different story entirely.

The issue becomes further muddled as Google continuously updates and refines its search algorithm to adapt to a changing internet. Thus we find ourselves with countless how-to articles online that are likely filled with outdated info and misleading tips.

Thankfully, getting your brand’s SEO in order is not impossible, but doable by anyone with the proper knowledge and SEO management tools.

We’ll define the three main types of SEO, why they matter, and finish with solid SEO strategies for 2022 and beyond.

The Three Types of SEO

Before you can begin to improve your SEO, you need to understand what it involves.

Currently, there are three key areas of SEO that go into an overall effective strategy.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO applies to everything that you place on the web page.

This type of SEO helps dictate what search terms your web pages rank for as well as how high you rank for them. Ranking factors for on-page SEO include:

• Content quality
• Keyword selection and placement
• Titles
• Headers
• Images
• Meta descriptions
• Alternative text

In addition to this, Google utilizes a rating system to grade the trustworthiness of your content overall. They readily provide their full book of rater guidelines here.

Off-Page SEO

If On-Page SEO applies to everything “on-page,” the same is true for the alternative.

Off-page SEO refers to any ranking factors found on another domain aside from your own.

Examples of off-page SEO ranking factors include:

• Backlinks from other domains
• Directory listings/citations
• Business reviews

If Google finds that other trusted domains regularly point back to your site for information, it lends credibility to the quality of your content. Similarly, having listings that match the business info on your site builds confidence with Google’s search crawler.

Technical SEO

Finally, technical SEO refers to factors that affect site performance as well as Google’s ability to index your content.

Technical SEO ranking factors include:

• Page loading speed
• Site mapping
• Internal and outbound links
• Duplicate content
• Website security
• Schema markup

All of these factors can make it easier or more difficult for Google to crawl your site. The better Google’s crawler can access and index your content, the more likely you are to improve your rankings.

Creating a Comprehensive SEO Strategy for 2022

Understanding the different types of SEO points you to the ranking factors you need to address.

However, you still need to understand what the most effective strategies are to get those ranking factors trending favorably.

Without further ado, let’s get into the most important tactics you need to be using to help your website rank higher.

On-Page SEO Strategies

1. Map Your Site for Keywords

Anyone remotely familiar with website rankings knows one important term – keywords.

Optimizing a webpage for specific keywords will help that page rank on search engine results pages (SERPs) when a user includes that keyword.

However, the biggest mistake website owners make is attempting to rank multiple pages for the same keyword. While it seems intuitive to include an important keyword as much as possible, doing so can hurt your results.

Attempting to rank too many pages for similar keywords and content is what is known as keyword cannibalization.

Here’s essentially what happens.

Business A attempts to rank for “SEO strategies” on multiple web pages. Each page has great, informative content.

However, when a user searches this keyword, Google finds multiple pages on the same domain. These pages end up competing against one another, lowering the potential results for each.

This is a primary reason why successful SEO strategies include keyword mapping. This helps brands ensure that they have a specific page dedicated to content for a specific keyword they’re attempting to rank for. Furthermore, focusing more high-quality content on one page will improve the value and quality of that page for search rankings.

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Selecting specific pages for keywords becomes increasingly important as you add more content and pages to your site. Then, as your brand creates more valuable content, you can revisit pages and update them as necessary. This also helps your domain to appear timely and up-to-date to Google’s crawler.

2. Create a Content Blog

Content marketing and SEO work in perfect harmony.

To improve your SEO, you need more high-quality content that’s relevant to your industry and offerings. A blog gives you the space and freedom you need to accomplish this.

Successful blogs can include everything from industry updates to business insights, to educational pieces. All of these present an opportunity to provide something free and of value to your prospects and customers.

More pages dedicated to high-quality topics means that you’ll have more gateways for users to find you. A potential customer might not search with terms that land them on your home page, but a well-placed blog topic could be just the key to gaining their attention.

Here are some tips for getting the best results with your blog.

• Keep a list of interesting topics based on keywords you want to rank for
• Don’t forget about long-tail keywords, which are generally less competitive
• Focus on writing a great article, not on stuffing keywords (Use 3-4 times throughout)
• Aim for a minimum of 1,000 words (but always choose quality over quantity)
• Create opportunities to include call-to-actions
• Create opportunities to naturally link to other pages or blog topics within the article
• Include relevant high-quality images

Furthermore, be sure to keep a map of all of your blog topics. This will help you to avoid the problem of keyword cannibalization in the future as discussed above.

Instead, you can refer to your keyword map, revisit your published blog, and update it with new information when applicable. Not only does it strengthen keyword rankings, but it will inform Google’s crawler of new content and help your pages appear up-to-date. This can help your content appear more useful and worthy of ranking than similar content that’s older.

3. Optimize Titles and Headers

Titles and headers are huge for SEO for both general web pages and blog pages.

The reason for this is that Google’s search crawler looks at these H1-H4 tags to interpret and understand the content. Likewise, headers also allow readers to decipher the content meaning and layout quickly and efficiently.

This is especially effective for long-form content. Readers might have an interest in the overall topic, but you can maximize engagement by specifically highlighting key points throughout the article that are more captivating than others.

Titles and headers are the road map for everyone that visits your page. Make it easy to get to the destination by thoughtfully planning yours ahead of time.

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4. Don’t Forget Meta Descriptions and Miscellaneous Tags

A web page’s meta descriptions and tags further assist in your keyword rankings.

The meta description is the short text that appears below your page name in SERPs. It’s your opportunity to quickly gain the attention of users so that they choose your result over competitors.

A great meta description consists of roughly 155-160 characters. This helps to keep your message concise and prevents it from being cut off by display limits. Furthermore, any keywords you use within the meta description get highlighted in bold to help users identify them.

Every page on your site needs a well-written meta description. You can typically find this within your CMS by accessing your page settings.

There are other similar tags and descriptions you can add to your page when applicable. Among these includes alternative text for your images and videos. This helps users understand the content if it fails to load, and also allows you to add keywords once more if applicable.

Off-Page SEO Strategies

Off-page SEO goes beyond the content found on your domain.

To maximize your SEO efforts, you’ll need to establish your brand in other locations online. This can be relatively simple to difficult depending on the resources you have available.

Here are some key ways that you can start generating some external references as soon as today.

1. Social Networking

Social media is the way of the internet.

There are an estimated 4 billion active users on all platforms with that number expected to rise each year. It’s a primary way for users to connect and that also includes brands.

If you’ve yet to get your brand on social media, your SEO is just one of many excuses to start.

A regularly updated social media account can allow you to:

• Share content with users on new platforms
• Provide more effective customer service
• Generate brand awareness and followers from new demographics
• Connect with peers in your industry

Establishing a following with your audience on social media is a great way to generate inbound links to your domain.

Similar to your content blog, getting more links directing to your domain helps with boosting your daily traffic and engagement. You can use your social profiles to promote your new articles and benefit both channels simultaneously.

A bigger benefit of social media is the ability to like and share. When you post content on social media, your followers can like and share it with their associations. This acts as free marketing and gets your content in front of more eyes that can choose to engage with it.

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The more links you have pointing to your domain, the more likely you are to gain more traffic. The more traffic your website receives, the better your SEO will be.

2. Guest Blogging

Guest blogging will also require social networking.

However, getting your brand name published on someone else’s domain is powerful for SEO. Like social media, it builds awareness with new audiences. You can then take advantage of the opportunity to plug your domain, which adds one more backlink to your profile.

Whenever you obtain backlinks from highly-ranked domains, that authority and trustworthiness transfers to your site by association.

Many website owners will be eager to entertain guest blogs in a mutual exchange. Rather than paying money for the work, you will typically write for their site while they write for yours. Both sites benefit from gaining new, interesting content while giving both website owners a quality backlink.

The type of content depends entirely on your agreement. You may need to create a full-fledged article for their website or simply provide a short snippet for a roundup piece.

In either scenario, the ultimate goal is to acquire that backlink and get your name seen by new prospects.

3. Use Local Directories

Signing your business up for local website directories is great for building local SEO.

Local SEO refers to any strategies designed to help your website rank with users searching for businesses within your area. You can improve your local SEO by circling back to your keywords. Terms like “plumber near me” or “best Thai restaurant” are examples of local SEO keywords.

You can also bolster your SEO strategies by using a directory. This includes platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, or Yellow Pages.

Whenever you create a profile for your business on one of these sites, your brand has a chance of appearing in local searches.

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Much like the content on your site, you should optimize your listing profile appropriately. This is a great opportunity to rank for local keywords or any other terms relevant to your core offerings.

You should also ensure that your business information is up-to-date and accurate. Include images of the workplace or your offerings to give users a better idea of your brand.

When your listing profile is optimized and strong levels of engagement, it will be more likely to show up at the top of search results.

Technical SEO Strategies

Finally, your company can cement its SEO strategy by taking care of key technical SEO ranking factors regularly.

1. Optimize Your Page Loading Speeds

According to Google, as your loading time increases from 1 to 10 seconds, your bounce rate increases by 123%.

The bounce rate refers to any time a user clicks on your page but leaves without taking any action. The visitor doesn’t just hurt you immediately, but the heightened bounce rate will negatively impact your overall SEO.

Fast loading isn’t just a preference for most visitors, it’s officially a ranking factor for Google. Not only is it their goal to provide searchers with accurate information, but to also ensure that the user experience is ideal.

For starters, you can utilize a tool like PageSpeed Insights to test your loading times. While it’s possible to attain near-instant load times, it’s a difficult task. You ideally want to shoot for roughly 3-5 second load times at the maximum.

You can improve loading times by:

• Minifying HTML, CSS, or JavaScript
• Utilizing asynchronous script loading
• Optimizing on-page images
• Hosting videos on external servers
• Enabling browser caching
• Upgrading or switching to a faster website host

2. Optimize for Mobile

More than half of all web traffic is now coming from mobile devices.

You can test how friendly your site is for those mobile users by using Google’s test here.

The test will tell you the exact health issues present on our site that are negatively impacting the mobile user experience. Work closely with your web developers to find convenient ways to improve your website design and layout to remedy these problems.

Many common mobile site issues can be remedied by implementing the strategies above regarding improved loading speeds. Phones generally have less internal power and weaker internet connections, so less content to load will greatly improve the process.

Furthermore, most modern CMSs allow you to create separate layouts for desktop and mobile. Always be sure to test out how your content appears and loads on a mobile device before publishing it to the internet.

3. Implement a Link Building Strategy

We mentioned this above regarding your content blog, but internal link building is an aspect of technical SEO.

The reason for this is that the Google search crawler follows internal links found on your site. It uses this to better interpret the purpose of your content and how it interacts with other pages on the site.

The more quality internal links a page has, the more likely Google may be to feature that page in relevant search results.

Furthermore, well-placed internal links should keep your readers interested. When you link from one topic to another of immediate interest, the user is more likely to spend more time on your domain. This will boost your page clicks, average session duration, and potentially other metrics that can drive up your overall SEO value.

4. Audit and Repair Broken Links

While quality links help your SEO, broken links can harm your website in several ways.

As described above, the Google search crawler will attempt to follow any links either internal or outbound on your site. If the link is broken, Google may abandon the crawl early, preventing it from indexing any other content on your site. This can make your SEO work for naught.

Secondly, a broken link leads to a poor user experience. If users attempt to click a link on your site and end up with a 404, they’re far more likely to bounce away from your domain. A higher bounce rate is a red flag for Google and hurts your SEO value.

Broken links happen for several reasons, including:

• Entering a URL that no longer exists
• A typo in the URL
• The URL leads to a redirect that is unsuccessful

Fortunately, all of these are easy issues to correct. Simply edit the link on the page to feature the correct URL where applicable. You always want to minimize the number of redirects you use on the domain as this will also help with overall loading times.

5. Omit Duplicate Content from Indexing

Duplicate content is always a red flag for Google.

It can confuse the crawler and prevent it from properly judging the quality of the content. It can also be an indicator that the content is not original and plagiarized from another source. In either case, the content appears less valuable than a page with unique material.

However, there are rare cases in which using duplicate content on more than one page is a necessary strategy. You might have duplicate content if you are in the process of migrating content from one URL to another. While the old page still exists, you end up using a redirect to send users to the new page version.

If you have a scenario in which you must have duplicate content, there is a way to avoid SEO penalties.

You will need to use what’s known as a Robots.txt file on the site. This is an HTML file that essentially instructs Google’s search crawler on which URLs to crawl and which to avoid. This way, you can highlight the correct version of the page and skip over the other.

Robots.txt is useful for several reasons and can help you to conserve your crawl budget. Google’s crawler may only crawl a certain number of pages on your domain per month, so it’s ideal to be mindful of this when creating new content.

6. Secure Your Website

Another ranking factor for SEO with Google is website security.

Specifically, you’ll want to upgrade your website from the HTTP protocol to HTTPS.

HTTPS stands for “Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure,” and is a way of securing any communications that happen between the end-user and your website server.

While it’s perhaps less important for a general informational site, any pages that collect data or feature financial transactions require it.

Not only does Google use HTTPS as a ranking factor, but seeing the secure logo on your site is more likely to inspire trust and confidence in your users.

To make this change, you’ll need to purchase an SSL certificate for your site. A basic certificate should cover most websites, but domains that feature a large number of information exchanges like an eCommerce site may want to upgrade to something more sophisticated.

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Check with your current domain host as they likely sell SSL certificates within their platform. This should make the transition much easier than purchasing from a third party and setting it up manually.

7. Utilize Schema Markup

Finally, schema markup is an SEO tool that can further assist Google in identifying the content on a given webpage.

Schema markup, also referred to as structured data, is a coding language that you can use to tag and classify content on your page. With the right schema applied, Google can better index the site and deliver high-quality information to users.

Schema markup can be used to identify several things including logos, company names, ratings, dates, important personnel, and much more. There are hundreds of schema available for anyone to use.

This language not only helps with content on the page but can improve the way your result looks on a Google SERPs.

For example, check out this result for “iPad Mini Best Buy.”

With schema markup, we know a lot about the result without clicking. We can see star ratings, numerical rating, reviews, pricing, and stock. This has more value than a result that would lack this information without schema markup.

Schema markup is an advanced SEO tactic and requires some studying to properly implement. You can start learning more about it here.

Implement These SEO Strategies in 2022 for Business Success

SEO is an ever-evolving practice, but these tactics will always remain relevant.

Furthermore, your competitors will also be implementing these tactics, which is why improving your search rankings is never an easy task.

However, actively monitoring your site’s health and content performance will point you in the right direction. Take advantage of free tools such as Google Analytics and PageSpeed Insights to stay up-to-date with both.

Other SEO management tools such as SEMRush can further assist with areas such as link audits and keyword research.

Ultimately, you will need to determine what your best offers as well as your goals to create the perfect SEO strategy. This will dictate what types of content to create so that you can measure, rewrite, and re-engage with the audience for optimal results.

Instagram features over one billion monthly users.

That figure alone makes it apparent why brands and marketers are capitalizing on the platform.

However, every other brand has the same idea. Hundreds of thousands of brands are vying for any given person's attention daily.

The result is a highly competitive environment that amounts to a densely packed minefield. One false move could cause users to reach for the unfollow button.

If this is happening to you, you're not alone. Let's take a look at what you're doing wrong so that you can learn how to stop losing followers on Instagram.

1. You Cheated the Game with Fake Followers

You're likely sitting there saying, Not me!ā

However, studies otherwise indicate that more than half of influencers on the platform are using fake followers. Nearly half of all accounts may be fake.

It's an extremely common tactic for new brands to buy followers. The more followers you have, the more likely you are to attract new attention organically. Instagram may also recognize your follower account and be more likely to promote your posts.

The problem is that it can catch up to you eventually. Instagram knows that this is a prevailing problem and is taking a proactive approach to banning these accounts.

Furthermore, if they can connect the accounts to yours, there's a good chance you can receive a full ban or a shadowban.

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You'll know if your account is banned as you will no longer be able to log in with your username.

A shadowban is more subtle as it still allows you to access the account. However, Instagram will prevent your content from appearing to new users with this type of ban.

If you engage in these tactics and find your brand losing Instagram followers, you need to take a closer look.

You may be losing followers simply because those bots are being discovered and deleted. You may also want to do some testing or reach out to Instagram to determine if you are in fact on a shadowban list.

2. All of Your Content is the Same

Instagram is unlike your other marketing channels. You cannot expect to rely on similar strategies for too long and expect great results.

Social media works much more like a local, social hangout spot. People will drop in and out as they please. They typically only stick around if there's something new and exciting happens to keep their interest.

Unfortunately, most brands go on with a full business-centric mindset. You end up being the most boring person at the event that everyone can't get away from fast enough.

They know your brand and they've heard the same pitch one too many times. Instead of being a part of the conversation, you're now talking at users instead of inviting them to join you.

One of the reasons this happens is that many brands do not devote the necessary resources to create a legitimate social media strategy. They end up creating an account, drafting up a few posts, and scheduling them to go out never to think about them again.

In reality, your brand requires a dedicated social media specialist. This person can consistently be active with other users on the platform. Not only does this provide firsthand insight into what's trending or interesting, but it also gives them more freedom to test out different types of content.

Don't be afraid to explore all types of media. Use pictures, create interesting infographics, and be sure to rely on video. Use Instagram photoshop actions to keep it quick and engaging, and always leave users hungry for whatever might come next.

3. Your Content is All About Trying to Make a Buck

Instagram users, and any social media user for that matter, are constantly bombarded with advertisements.

Any number of brands are vying for their attention on a given day. The result is that users automatically filter out promotional, salesyā  content without thinking. If all of your content is about selling, you might as well not post at all.

An effective social media strategy can and will help drive sales. However, your Instagram account is typically not the place to perform the hard sell.

Instead, social media is the place where you want to discover new leads and nurture those relationships naturally. It's about being a part of the greater conversation and convincing your following that your content is worth seeing daily in their timeline.

That isn't to say that you can't or shouldn't promote a sale or product. Highlighting a big sale or a hotly anticipated item is a great thing to include in your collection of posts. But, it shouldn't account for all or even most of them.

Great content can be educational. It can give customers a look behind the scenes. It can even just be a humorous post meant to brighten someone's day.

Brands must experiment more with different types of content to determine what resonates right now with the current audience. Just be sure that your content is consistent with your established tone and values.

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4. Your Posting Frequency is Off

In addition to creating great content, the timing of that content must also be consistent.

Many social media users are creatures of habit. They have their social routine which may be checking before work, on lunch, or strictly on the weekends. If you establish a routine of posting new content on schedule, they'll be sure to see it.

Conversely, posting on a haphazard schedule will cause users to miss your posts entirely. For example, posting during prime working hours may be a surefire way to alienate much of your would-be audience.

Different social platforms seem to have their peak times for ideal posting, and Instagram is no different. Sprout Social finds that the hottest times to post are during weekdays just around lunchtime. However, there also seems to be strong engagement throughout the afternoon before tapering off into the evening.

Your posting schedule may also vary depending on your audience's behaviors as well as your industry type. Just like with content, you will also want to perform some testing to see which hours are the best for your brand to post.

Once you find a schedule that works, it's imperative to show consistency. When users are clicking and following, don't push them away by changing things up unnecessarily.

5. You Failed to Establish a Unique Voice

Finally, your brand needs to have something unique and interesting to say. If you fail to make yourself stand out, nothing is stopping your audience from unfollowing and discovering countless other brands in your industry.

It's worthwhile to investigate the competition and analyze what's working in their social media strategy. However, your goal should not be to directly copy their voice and style.

Instead, it's time to do some deep reflection and think about what your brand has to offer that's different from the other voices on Instagram. If you have a unique value proposition worth listening to, the followers will come naturally.

If you're observing a loss in followers, it can be a result of this. Users may scroll through the timeline and one-day question why they're following an account that is too generic or too similar.

Find ways to separate yourself from other voices in your industry. Furthermore, you can also use your Instagram account to survey your followers directly. Not only are users generally willing to provide insight, but adding this type of engagement to your repertoire could help facilitate better relationships in the long term.

Stop Your Brand from Losing Instagram Followers

Seeing a loss of Instagram followers is disheartening. However, we are lucky to have such immediate access to analytics and insights as this alerts us to a fixable problem.

Instead of panicking, stop reflecting on your current Instagram strategy. Review the types of content you're sharing, think about your voice, and monitor your frequency. Some issues may be easily corrected, while others may require you to head back to the drawing board.

Marketing, in general, is a rapidly changing industry. However, social media is that much faster. Interests and trends can change without warning. The best brands on social are agile and ready to adapt to anything.

If you want to rebuild your Instagram follower base, then your brand, too, has to be dynamic. Create engaging content, target users at the right times, and results will come.