4 Reasons Why Blogs Help Your Digital Marketing Strategy

4 Reasons Why Blogs Help Your Digital Marketing Strategy 

Far too often we see businesses neglect their blog or news section on their company website. 

In some cases it is infrequent posts and in other cases it is not even present.

There are various benefits to staying active on your company blogs. Without having proper context to the benefits, it can easily be neglected or even improperly utilized.

Below, I compiled a list of 4 reasons why blogs help your digital marketing strategy.

1) Search Engine Optimization 

Having fresh content on your website is always a good thing when it comes to SEO. 

On top of that, every time you create a blog it gives you a chance to create internal links on your site, providing Google and other search engines a better understanding of what some of your pages mean and how to better rank them.

For any company looking to improve their search engine optimization, blogging consistently is a must.

One of our clients, New Optical Palace, really wanted to work on ranking “optometrist Kitchener ”. Utilizing blogs and other service pages we were able to produce 44 links to help with their seo efforts.

2) Sales Funnel

If done properly, blogs can serve as a good first stage of an online sales funnel. 

We wrote an article on buyers intention on our company blog which indicated that a buyers initial stage on making an online purchase is the research phase.

Cater your blogs to capture people as they research. If done properly, you can catch researchers early in their buying stage.

From there you can either retarget these visitors on social media for future buying stages or integrate strong call-to-actions within the blog to capture sales or leads immediately.

One of our clients, Hotline Mortgages, who specializes in debt consolidation, does a good job of embedding call-to-action forms in their blogs. 

They wrote a blog titled, Discover How Your Home Can Help You Live a Better Retirement, and within it they added a call-to-action on finding out how much a reader can qualify for.

3) Creditably in Your Field

Having a good reputation in your industry as a leader and knowledge source can eventually lead to sales.

It is one thing to say you know what you’re doing and another to show you know what you’re doing.

Writing blogs that are how-to structured or education pieces is a good way to showcase your authority in your industry. 

Our client, Draintony, writes a lot of educational blogs on basement waterproofing, like this one titled Benefits of Basement Waterproofing. By staying consistent with these types of blogs, he shows potential clients that he knows what he is doing.

4) Keep Your Social Media and E-Mail Distribution Fresh

Having fresh social media content and email list content is always good to keep your followers engaged.

If you have too much of a gap between posts and emails you might miss out on opportunities to drive traffic to your site or miss out on potential sales.

This is where having consistent blogs comes in.

One of our clients, GTA Condo and Home, who specializes in condos for sale North York, consistently produces 1 blog per week to keep their visitors engaged and coming back.

This also becomes very beneficial when it comes time to do retarget marketing as users come in for information related to his service, and the database can now be used to do targeted advertising.

About Marvin Torreno

Marvin has over 17 years of sales and marketing experience. Currently, Marvin is a Managing Partner at Retailors Group, specializing in Sales, Leadership, and Marketing.

We offer Digital Marketing Services including Website Design, Social Media Management, SEO, SEM and Content Marketing. Serving the Greater Toronto Area.

360 Photos and Videos for Marketing

How to Make Use of 360 in your Marketing Strategy

Our agency recently invested in 360 photo/video equipment and software recently to execute on a special project for a client.

Since we made the investment, we started to explore and research how we could offer services around 360 photos and videos.

We came up with 3 platforms where you can use 360 photos and videos to help you stand out:

1) Google My Business Street View

Adding a 360 view of the inside of your business can be very beneficial to showcase what your environment looks like from the inside. Outside of showcasing, bringing street view to the inside of your business increases trust with your consumers and makes your listing stand out vs the competition.

76% of people who search on their smartphone for something nearby visit a business within a day (source: Retailors Group). Give yourself a competitive advantage by adding a 360 view.

Location: Ombretta Cucina + Vino

2) Facebook Pictures/Videos and YouTube Videos in 360

Facebook and YouTube are the 2 biggest social media sites around with the largest base of users. Both platforms jump on top of the latest trends and offer it to their users before any other social media site. If they aren’t the first, they are the most effective on capitalizing and marketing it.

With that said, it is no surprise that both social media giants offer 360 photos (Facebook) and videos to be uploaded and viewed.

When a user is scrolling through a Facebook news feed, a 360 video or photo will immediately stand out as a special 360 icon will appear on the content indicating interactivity.

Location: New Optical Palace Kitchener

Similar to Facebook, YouTube shows a 360 icon right under the description box to indicate its interactivity. On top of that, most users that upload a 360 video will take advantage of the thumbnail to indicate the video is in 360.

Utilizing 360 on both of the social sites will give you the advantage of standing out over the noise of other posts.

3) Showcasing your Product in an Immersive Experience

Are you in real estate or car sales? Using 360 is a perfect way to allow your consumers to jump right into your product. 

With advancements and adoption in vr technology, using 360 photos/videos gives businesses another avenue to be ahead of the competition. Imagine putting on a vr headset and seeing what a property looks like inside before visiting it in person. 

By offering such a service, it gives you the advantage and reputation of being ahead of your competitors.

Using 360 photos and videos won’t directly help you increase sales, but the indirect benefits of standing out, sparking a memorable experience and being an early adopter will have long term positive effects. 

About Marvin Torreno

Marvin has over 17 years of sales and marketing experience. Currently, Marvin is a Managing Partner at Retailors Group, specializing in Sales, Leadership, and Marketing.

We offer Digital Marketing Services including Website Design, Social Media Management, SEO, SEM and Content Marketing. Serving the Greater Toronto Area.

Hiring Sales People Based on Competencies vs Experience

When it comes to hiring sales people, there are various aspects of the candidate we must look at. Although sales experience carries some weight, matching a candidates competencies to competencies required for the job should carry more weight.

So what is required for the sales position that needs to be filled? Before you post your job description up, it might be a good time to review what the job entails.

A good exercise to do is to interview current sales people in your company to find what makes them good. What are some of their day-to-day duties? What qualities make them successful? What differentiates them from average to poor sales people in your company?

Next, you should interview their manager to see what their insights are on the same questions. Get a good sample size of information. If you have multiple locations or operate in different cities, it would be beneficial to see and talk to more sales people in different places.

After you go through this exercise and have enough information from various sources, find commonalities between your subjects and design your competency list of what is truly required to be successful at a sales job in your environment.

Now it is time to integrate these competencies to your job description to be posted. If you use interview guides for your recruiter or hiring manager, it will be crucial to focus in on these competencies that you uncovered as the key areas to ask questions around.

When conducting your interview with a potential candidate, try to stick to behavioural questions vs situational questions based on the competencies required. As an example, if a competency that is required is achievement motivation, ask them what their greatest achievement was at their previous job or even in life. This will give you a good idea of how motivated they are and what their definition of achievement is. Don't throw a situational question here like, "what would you consider a good achievement if you were to join us?".

Situational questions will give you hypothetical answers, behavioural questions will give you real life examples of what they have done in certain situations.

So, back to the burning statement in the title of this post; hiring sales people based on competencies vs experience. If we see a resume for someone that worked for a competitor or in a like-wise industry, it will be very tempting to get excited. They might have track record and maybe even a reputation, but if they don't fit the competencies that makes sales people successful in your company, they will not fit.

They will not fit your company culture and may revert to doing things that "worked" at their other company. Now, don't get me wrong, in some cases shaking up your sales team with bringing in an experienced sales person from a competitor can be beneficial. You might uncover new ways of doing things and maybe even uncover competencies that can reshape the way you look for sales people.

If, on the other hand, you already have rockstar sales people in your company that are successful and are just filling vacant roles, stick to the competencies that work and don't get too excited about their experiences on their resume until you know they will be a good match.

About Marvin Torreno

Marvin has over 17 years of sales and marketing experience. Currently, Marvin is a Managing Partner at Retailors Group, specializing in Sales, Leadership, Retail Management, Digital Marketing and Field Marketing.