Rest assured, there's no need to panic—the cause is a recent Google API update that's designed to improve data integrity and show accurate search terms for local businesses.

In this blog post, you will find key take-aways, including a summary of the update and an explanation on why you might be seeing a drop in Google Business Profile metrics.

What is Google Business Profile Insights?

GBP Insights provides data about a business's local search performance, such as the number of profile views, how searchers find the business, and how they engage with the profile. Unlike other free Google tools such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics, Google Business Profile Insights focuses solely on local search presence and performance.

By consistently measuring local performance, businesses can gain valuable insight into their local search performance across mobile and desktop surfaces, including understanding how frequently certain search terms find their Business Profile.

The feature also offers a range of search-based metrics to measure customer engagement and performance and can be used by organizations of all sizes, from small businesses to multi-location enterprise brands.

The Google Business Profile Insights Changes and What They Mean for Your Business:

Google made some changes to its APIs that impact how it defines certain metrics on GBP, including profile views, searches, and direction requests. This update was made to increase the quality of data available to you. Also, Google has since removed certain data points from its Business Profile performance insights dashboard.

These include:

• Post views and clicks
• Query volumes grouped by direct, brand, and discovery
• Views across photos uploaded by users 

As such, businesses will no longer have the same visibility into how their Posts and photos are performing.

However, businesses will still have access to:

• Map views (desktop and mobile)
• Search views (desktop and mobile)
• Website clicks
• Call clicks
• Driving direction clicks
• Keyword queries

As a result of this change, you may notice a decrease in profile views compared to previous periods, but this will generally be true for all businesses.

Why did Google make these changes?

Google has not provided any specifics about its decision to remove the aforementioned data points, but there are a few possible explanations.

One is that daily data granularity may not provide a complete picture of user behavior, while smaller data points may be deleted by Google to protect user privacy.

It’s also possible that, in line with Google’s commitments to improve user privacy and data protection, the search giant is concerned about data storage and retention policies that could be linked to individual user behavior.

Specifically with respect to photo metrics, it’s possible Google may be making it difficult to connect photo insights to search performance within its search algorithm.

Despite the removal of photo metrics, businesses should still focus on photo collection and optimization in GBP, as photos remain a great way to visually showcase a business’s products and services.

Don't worry, This Update is a Good Thing!

It's understandable if you're worried that your business is suddenly less popular with the public, but that's not actually the case. In fact, there's some great news to share.

One of the most exciting things about Google’s latest API is their ‘Search Terms’ card that allows a small and medium-sized business (SMB) to hone in on the exact keywords that customers are using to find their business. This tool enables you to identify the specific keywords that customers are using to find their business. With Google's new focus on unique user interactions, you can be confident that the Search Terms data is accurate and useful for optimizing your GBP.

In other words, even though you may see a dip in profile views thanks to the Google Business Profile insights update, you now have access to more valuable data to help you (us) improve your online presence.

We encourage you to leverage the Search Terms card to understand your customers' search behaviors and enhance your GBP accordingly.

With Google's new API update, in the dashboard, on your Google Insights page, you will now see a search breakdown, allowing you to see the specific search terms that led customers to your GBP. This is a valuable opportunity for you to gain insight into your search engine optimization (SEO) and the keywords that are driving traffic to your business.

To access this data, simply navigate to your Business App, go to Listing Builder, and select Google Insights.

You can also go one step further. You can use the Top Keywords feature in Reputation Management Pro (when activated) to view the most common topics mentioned in your Google reviews and the sentiment analysis associated with those keywords.

This way, you get two layers of data: What people are searching for in Google, and what the recurring themes are in Reviews.

And while we're talking about Reviews, let's talk a little bit about repsonding to reviews. As we've discussed in the past, it is critical to be collecing as many reviews for your bsuenss as you can, and toe REPSOND to every review.

Remeber, the AI-powered responses available through Reputation Management Pro and Social Marketing Pro can save you time and improve engagement with your customers.

The “suggest reply.” feature makes it all so simple and efficient!

Summary

Here are some tips for tracking the performance of your business listings :

• Keep monitoring your GBP - there are lots of good insights to help you run your business.
• Use customer reviews and insights within our tool Reputation Management to evaluate your businesses’ performance and what your customers are saying.
• Pay attention to the number of leads generated from each listing and optimize lower-performing listings by ensuring up-to-date business information, optimizing the primary category, adding additional categories, etc.
• Monitor keyword performance to inform your keyword strategy.
• Analyze both mobile and desktop performance using the new APIs that give access to mobile and desktop performance for views in Google Maps and Search.

By understanding the treasure trove of data available at your fingertips, and how quickly you can act on customer feedback, you can positively impact your businesses' online presence and overall performance.

Feel free to contact one of our experts if you would like more information or if you are ready to take control, and leverage your online presence. E-mail: info@reallocalpartners.com

Social media marketing is about getting social with your target market where they are socializing and engaging them with your brand while they are engaging with their community, a community that you can access with a successful social media strategy.

There is zero doubt social media marketing is an incredibly valuable and powerful tool to help grow your business however, it’s not a black and white system to navigate. Social media strategies for small businesses will differ depending on which platforms your target market is spending the most of their time on. You want to be at the same party as your customers.

Key Social Platforms for Digital Marketing and how to select the one that’s right for your business

There are new social media platforms on the rise everyday. Remember MySpace, have you heard of Clubhouse yet? Do the younger people in your life ask you if you are even on tik tok? It can be overwhelming to think of keeping up with it all, but the good news is not every small business needs to be active across every platform. Remember, you want to be at the same party as your customers, not one down the street full of somebody else’s target audience.

To help you find out which platforms your target audience are using, here is a quick overview of the top social media platforms across the web. Depending on how much time or money you can spend on your social media strategy, pick 1 - 3 platforms that suit your target audience best and focus on those. 

**This overview is everywhere across the web - unknown original source to cite.

Facebook

Users: 1.79 billion daily active users worldwide

Audience: Generation X and millennials

Industry impact: B2C

Best for: Brand awareness; advertising

Twitter

Users: 186 million daily active users worldwide

Audience: Primarily millennials

Industry impact: B2B and B2C

Best for: Public relations; customer service

Instagram

Users: 1 billion monthly active users

Audience: Primarily millennials

Industry impact: B2C

Best for: Natural-looking media, behind-the-scenes, and user-generated content; advertising

LinkedIn

Users: 675 million monthly active users worldwide

Audience: Baby boomers, Generation X, and millennials

Industry impact: B2B

Best for: B2B relationships, business development, and employment marketing

YouTube

Users: Over 2 billion logged-in monthly users worldwide

Audience: Millennials, closely followed by Generation Z

Industry impact: B2C

Best for: Brand awareness; entertainment, and how-to videos

Snapchat

Users: 249 million daily active users worldwide

Audience: Primarily Generation Z

Industry impact: B2C

Best for: Brand awareness; advertising

Pinterest

Users: 416 million monthly active users worldwide

Audience: Primarily older millennials and younger baby boomers

Industry impact: B2C

Best for: Visual advertising; inspiration

Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Most small businesses owners know how important social media marketing is, but maybe you aren’t sure exactly why it’s so important. Let’s talk about the impactful benefits social media marketing can have on the growth and success of your small business.

1. Increase Brand Awareness
   According to statista.com, as of January 2021, there were 4.2 billion active social media users worldwide. That’s almost 60% of the global population, and of all the internet users in the world, 90% of them are active social media users. There’s no arguing that’s a huge potential audience, and being able to target your preferred market is undoubtedly a desirable feature in your social media strategy. 

   
   Social media marketing has been proven to be effective time and time again, not only by big brands, but by numerous small businesses. How is this accomplished? You must engage your community. Posts, likes, shares, comments, saves and re-posts are all examples of social engagement. There are many low cost ways to engage with your audience, and if you do it consistently; you will increase your brand awareness.

2. Generate Traffic and Leads and Boost Conversion
   When you are promoting and sharing your products and services on social media you are at a huge advantage because you are marketing directly to consumers who have already chosen to engage with your small business by following your account. This is a simple and low-cost way to increase lead generation. You can also easily direct traffic straight to your website or ecommerce store if you include direct links to your website in your profile, bio, blogs, posts and tweets. 

   
   Here are some examples of things you could implement into your social media strategy to generate traffic and leads and ultimately boost your sales.

   
   Collaborate with other accounts who have a similar target audience as yours, but not your direct competition. For example if you own a cake shop, you could collaborate with other party planners or wedding vendors and create a contest or giveaway for your followers to participate in on your social profiles. This is a great way for your small business to get in front of your preferred audience. It doesn’t hurt to also engage in meaningful dialogue with these accounts and their audiences because you know they have similar interests to what you offer. 

   
   Link - Make sure to include links to your website and offers in the bio sections of your profiles and in your posts and captions. There are many opportunities here to drive traffic directly to your ecommerce store or website.

   
   Use Video - Host live videos or make short clips or reels to make announcements about products and provide updates or details about exciting news at your company. Short videos are proven to be a great way to increase engagement.

   
   Turn your social profiles into an ecommerce shop. For example, you can enable Facebook’s Shop Section on Instagram's Shopping feature on your profiles. These powerful features help your visitors and followers to arrive on your products and view the price, descriptions and then convert the sale right then and there directly from your small business.

3. Increase Search Engine Ranking
   This is where a strategy is really important because posting without one isn’t going to provide anyone value, which means Google won’t put you on display to your audience. It’s important to understand that increasing your search engine ranking isn’t the same as increasing your social engagement, although both are important in your social media marketing strategy. Google can’t keep up with the rapid creation of posts and changes to profiles on social media, so the key here is to use your social posts as a way to drive traffic to your website, ecommerce store, or blog. Once a user lands on your page they will spend time reading your content. The more engaging and valuable your content is; the more time they will spend on your site which will then signal to Google that your site is valuable, and Google’s main goal is to provide the user with valuable information. We will dive in deeper here in module 7 and 8 when we talk about content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO).

 

4. Build a Relationship with your Target Customer
   When you connect and engage with your social media followers, you’ll forge a long lasting relation between them and your small business. You do this by interacting with your audience on your posts, responding to their questions and comments and showing up for them when they are directly asking for you. You can also engage your audience by asking them questions about your products or services and get valuable feedback or create giveaways to help you build trust and demonstrate how much you value your audience. 

 

5. Increase Customer Loyalty to your Small Business
   When you show your audience how much you value them and when they feel a personal connection to your business, they will become loyal to your brand and even better, they will become advocates.

 

6. Improve Your Customer Service
   While the thought of an upset customer turning to social media and tweeting or posting publicly about their less than positive experience can be a stressful scenario, it’s also a great opportunity to publicly react and do some crisis management. Your audience might also love that you are accessible and easy to reach on your social platforms which translates to them as great customer service.

   
   Social Media Marketing, in today’s world is an absolute must. 

   
   We know all of this information can seem overwhelming but Real Local Partners

   make establishing, stabilizing and leveraging your online presence easier!

After all, without straightforward, actionable, and attainable metrics, how do you know what you're working toward? Goal setting should always take precedence when it comes to putting together a campaign since it can serve as the foundation for the entire project.

When you meet your digital marketing targets, you're likely also achieving your overall company objectives.

There are a number of goals you can set up, but here are some of the most common goals for SMBs.

More Leads: Generating leads is one of the top priorities for businesses and marketers.

Increase conversion: Another important digital marketing objective is to convert more readers/viewers/followers into customers.

Increase sales: This is the ultimate goal for most businesses.

Increase traffic: For example, organic traffic, and traffic from social media.

When it comes to the goals we have set for our marketing objectives, it's not enough to simply say "I want more sales"; it’s important that you are specific and know exactly what objectives you want to set and exactly what KPIs you're going to use to achieve those goals.

What are KPIs?

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable metrics that reflect how well an organization is achieving its stated goals and objectives.

For example, if one of your goals is to provide superior customer service, you could use a KPI to target the number of customer support requests that remain unsatisfied at the end of each week. This is a way to measure your progress toward your objective.

KPIs link an organizational vision to individual action. Ensure that the KPIs you set up are: 

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Timely

Setting Marketing Objectives for your SMB

Take a moment, close your eyes and picture your SMB one, five, or ten years from now. 

Where do you want to be? 
How big do you want your business to be? 
How much revenue do you want to be bringing in? 
Do you want to be lying on a beach somewhere, already having cashed out on your business?

It’s important to write these objectives down and consider what finances need to be available in order to achieve your goals. It’s important to ensure these objectives are realistic and attainable. 

It’s ok to start small. Realistic business goals that you can actually achieve are far better than overly ambitious ones that never go anywhere.

Put those long term objectives into daily, weekly, or monthly tasks. Make it possible to accomplish your goals with hard work. Evaluate your business goals on a regular basis to make sure you are heading in the right direction.

Why are KPIs important for my SMB?

Tracking relevant KPIs can assist in decision-making and allow you to evaluate your business process in real-time.

KPIs are vital navigational instruments that can provide a clear picture of current levels of performance and tell you whether the business is where it needs to be.

KPIs are the only way you are going to know if you are heading in the right direction.

There is no point in setting off on a journey, if you don’t know the end destination or how you are going to get there right?

Setting KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

We know! Chances are, when you set up your SMB, “KPIs” were the last thing you were thinking of. For most people setting up their own business, the emphasis is on creating a sustainable organization that offers job satisfaction. World domination, becoming a millionaire, and providing economic relief to millions of people probably weren’t at the forefront when you thought about setting up your own business.

As your business evolves, you might seriously need to look at KPIs. KPIs are not just for huge corporations, they are also - for SMB owners like you too!

Don’t overcomplicate things. Setting a few simple KPIs for the next 6-12 months can make your SMB just that little bit more successful. Start small, simple, and make it straightforward. Here are a few examples:

NET PROFIT
This is an easy place to start! A KPI for an SMB is to track your net profit over time. 

Is your company getting more or less profitable year to year? 

Net profit equals your revenue minus expenses; you can track this week to week, month to month, or year to year.

CASH FLOW FORECAST
Timing is everything! You don’t want lots of cash leaving the business at the point in the month when minimal cash is due. It’s important to strike a balance between money flowing in and out so that you’re not left out of pocket on the day your rent is due.

CUSTOMER ACQUISITION COST
How much does each new client cost your SMB? It’s worth considering sales and marketing expenses for each new customer, so you can establish whether you’re spending too much or too little.

STAFF RETENTION
Keep an eye on your team. If you find yourself hiring new staff on a too regular basis - look into it. Maybe your team is unmotivated or not focused. An unhappy team can have a huge impact on performance and profitability. Engage your team and see what can be done better within your SMB.

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
Customer satisfaction is a hugely important metric to keep track of because if your customers aren’t satisfied, they won’t keep coming back. Customer satisfaction these days is even more important than ever - because we LOVE to leave reviews! Good and bad.

RETURNING VS NEW VISITORS
Measuring the percentage of returning visitors, you see how engaged your audience is. For example, a low return rate to a blog page might indicate that your content isn’t compelling enough for people to return for more.

VISITS PER CHANNEL
Understanding your incoming traffic sources can help determine the most profitable marketing channels. If you’ve recently run a paid ad campaign via one of your social channels, you can assess the performance by looking at how much traffic (and leads) it brought in.

When setting objectives and KPIs for your SMB, think of them as part of the overall health of your business. They enable you to understand the performance and potential illnesses of your business so that you can make critical adjustments in your execution to achieve your strategic goals. 

By now we know the importance of the customer journey, but let’s not forget the importance of showing up online at every stage of said journey. To accomplish this, your SMB needs to have a good digital marketing strategy. Without a solid strategy you risk wasting all the valuable time and effort you are putting in, but with a good strategy in place, one which utilizes tools and automation, you will easily see a return on your investment and will likely have more time to spend doing what you do best. 

Digital marketing allows you to reach a larger targeted audience than you would be able to through traditional marketing. It’s also more cost-effective than traditional methods and with today’s technology, you can track and measure your success. Managing your progress is crucial to building your digital marketing strategy for your small business. 

Digital Strategy Fundamentals - Knowing your Audience

When advertising with traditional marketing methods, you have little control over who sees your ad. Whether you put it on TV, in a magazine, or on a billboard you never know for sure. Of course, some demographics can be measured, such as the magazine's average readership or the population of a specific community, but it's still mostly a guessing game. 

Your digital marketing strategy’s objective is to target a highly specific audience. You also deliver customized, high-converting marketing messages to that audience. To do this successfully, you must know your audience very well. That means researching your target market. 

A great exercise to start with is writing down 5 different personas of people you think would benefit from your service or product. Brainstorm things like their age, profession, level of education, gender, ethnicity, the location where they live or work, favorite magazine or tv shows, personality traits, core values, and what they care about, and of course why do they need your product? Create a bio for each of your 5 examples and think about their lifestyle and hobbies and where your SMB fits in. 

If you need some help, look at your current customer base and check out your competition. Pay attention to what your competitors are sharing. What is the sound of their voice? Not only can you gain a better understanding of how to interact with your audience, but you will also have a chance to engage your customer and create a community of your own.

It’s important to know your target audience so you know how to talk to them. If you were a professional speaker and were hired to speak in front of an audience, you would research your audience. Step one would be to find out what they like and don’t like, and how they like to be spoken to. You would tweak your messaging to attract and please your audience, digital marketing is no different. The next step is finding your audience and getting your message delivered to them. Knowing your audience and your budget will be important factors when deciding which digital marketing strategies to pursue for your SMB.

Build your content strategy

Based on your main objectives and your target audience, the next step is to map out a content plan. This should identify the main topics to include in your execution. Your content plan should focus on producing quality content, engaging with your audience, and measuring what works, and what doesn’t. Don't simply push out content for content's sake. Here are five ways to get content inspiration:

• Go back to step one and look for ideas from your competition. 

• Search your business on different search engines and see what the public is saying about your SMB

• Research hashtags on Instagram to see what is trending

• Look at Google search suggestions

Choose your channels and tactics

Once you know the content that resonates with your audience, choose the social channels that are most likely to give you the best results. Think about how each channel contributes to meeting your objective and goal. 

Any type of platform or method used to convey marketing messages is classed as a marketing channel. Some of the channels you are probably most familiar with are:

social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter), website, email, and blogs (just like this one you are reading). Some of the less familiar channels (mainly because of their complexity) are ​​apps, webinars, events, QR codes, chatbots, and SMS marketing.

Analyze and adjust

Because of the magic of this digital age, it’s easy enough to pivot and adjust according to your results. Your plan does not have to be set in stone. A solid plan, yes - set in stone - no. Think of your plan as the way a building moves in an earthquake. Rigidity doesn’t work, the building will fall. Flexibility means it rolls with the earthquake and the chances of it falling down are almost next to none.

For example, if an ad or idea you had isn’t delivering results, try something different. If your website isn’t converting visitors, do a comparison with a different call to action. 

“Learn more” may drive more traffic than “contact us today”. 

Trial and error with no fatal results - that’s why we love digital marketing!

It can be easy to focus on tactics with digital marketing — because every week, you will be presented with new ideas and different tools. But if you build a clear plan, stay focused on it - you will start to increase your results.

Patience and Consistency

We want to tell you that all of the above is easy and you will obtain results quickly. 

But if we did that, we’d be liars. 

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”

Take into account everything we have talked about in this blog and you can begin to see results in around 60-90 days. And yes, after finding that rhythm - it does get easier.

So, what are you waiting for?

• Keywords
• Relevance
• User-friendliness of the landing page
• Expertise of sources
• Location 

The focus on each factor varies depending on the search. For example, when it comes to answering searches about current events, the freshness of the content matters more than it does when it comes to dictionary definitions that have not changed. 

Breaking Down Search Engine Results Pages

A crucial part of the customer journey for a small business is showing up in search results when a consumer is searching for what you sell or offer. For you to make a sale, your product or service needs to show up on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Our CEO Mike always says, “the best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of a Google SERP.”

A SERP is made up of two main components:

1. The initial search query - a word or phrase that users type into a search engines’ search box to find the information they need.
2. Search results - The returned list of landing pages in response to the user’s search query. Each result will usually display the URL to the landing page, a title, a short description. As well as visuals like rating stars, thumbnail images, or videos.

It’s important to know how a search engine displays its results on a SERP.  Having this knowledge will help you optimize your online presence and show up on search results.

Let’s break it down:

Search Bar
What keywords/phrases does the auto-suggest provide?

Does your website, blog, or AdWords answer questions that are relevant to your business?

Google AdWords
Do your paid ads focus on longer searches that separate your business from your competitors?

Google Maps link
Did you claim your Google My Business listing?  

Did you include all relevant information such as name, address, phone number, hours, website, categories, etc.? Is it the same as on your website and other listings?

Local Pack
Are you leveraging reviews from happy customers?

Are you building high-quality citations? i.e. sending your business information (name, address, phone number, website, hours) to other key sites like Bing, Facebook, Yelp, RLP, etc.?

The Basics
Is your website mobile-friendly?

Does your website provide your name, address, phone number, hours? 

Does your website state the products you sell or services that you provide? 
Can your website be read by search engines? 
 

Are you optimizing the title tags, meta descriptions, etc.?

Related Searches 
Are you using related searches for ideas for content on your website/blog and AdWords?

You can have a million dollar idea, but if your customers can’t find you, you won’t sell anything.

Getting your business listed on search engines is a crucial step. Improving those listings and adding all the bells and whistles is where real local partners can do the heavy lifting for you. 

We are just getting started on building the foundational structure to your digital marketing strategy. Once the foundation is set and established, you can start to send traffic and leads to your business and watch the growth happen.

Want to learn more about how to grow and scale your business? Stay tuned for next month's blog about digital marketing strategies for small businesses.

When a consumer wants to find out more about your business, where do you think they look? Probably not an encyclopedia or newspaper. Nowadays, we all head to a search engine. That’s why we want to talk about the importance of business listings. Then we are going to look at your business’s online reputation and how reviews can make a huge impact on your bottom line.

When a consumer wants to find out more about your business, where do you think they look? Probably not an encyclopedia or newspaper. Nowadays, we all head to a search engine. That’s why we want to talk about the importance of business listings. Then we are going to look at your business’s online reputation and how reviews can make a huge impact on your bottom line.

Did you know that 66% of your ability to show up in local search and outrank your competitors is directly linked to managing your listings and reputation? That means you are in control.

Many online business listings are powerful, but often overlooked. Listings give consumers critical information about the business they are searching for like; location, hours of operation, and how to contact them. Have you ever looked up a business online only to find they have no hours of operation listed, or you found a different address on their Facebook page vs on google? That’s frustrating, right? If your business cannot be found online or your customers are being pointed in the wrong direction, they are more likely to give up on you and go to a competitor. 

Listings are one of the best ways for your business to get found. If you only have a few listings, you’re missing a huge opportunity. With the majority of time spent online whether it be for leisure or beneficial purposes, you want people to be able to stumble across what you have to offer at your SMB. 

Here’s a shortlist for listings that matter to your small business in North America. They might not all matter to you personally, but to search engines, they can hold a lot of weight:

- Google My Business

- Facebook 

- Instagram

- Twitter

- BING

- Navmii

- Factual

- Tupalo

- Whereto
- Opendi

- Yalwa

- Hotfrog

- Acompio

- iGlobal

- Bell Canada

- WAND

- HERE

-TomTom

-Yelp

- Car Manufacturer

- Ford

- GM

- Audi

- Mercedes

- VW

- FIAT

- BMW

- Toyota

Google My Business 

You’ll notice that Google My Business is right at the top of the list. That’s because it’s one of the most popular search engines. Creating a Google My Business listing is free and very effective in establishing an online presence. When claiming your Google My Business listing, make sure the details of your business are accurate and robust, so Google sees your listing as a valuable response to search queries. It doesn't build any confidence for a customer to read conflicting business hours on a business Facebook page and Google listing and Google knows it, now you do too.

You should know that while most local searches start in Google, Yelp and Facebook aren’t too far behind, so it makes sense to be listed on a variety of sources. That being said, listing your SMB on Google My Business is a fantastic place to start for customers, new or returning, to find you and your SMB. 

Listings are the foundation of your online presence. Once your listings are established properly, your customers will be able to find you. The next step is managing and controlling what they will find out about your business once they find it. Stay tuned for next month’s blog about reputation management when we dive into reviews and testimonials. 

The creation of the internet means people can share information and communicate from anywhere in the world as long as they have a connection. This has changed the way the world behaves. There are more than 4.5 billion active internet users today. With that many daily users, you can see why digital marketing has become essential to the Small the medium sized business (SMB) owner. The internet has shifted consumer habits when it comes to conducting research, shopping, connecting, and staying informed. To keep up, marketing had to change too. The basic foundation of marketing has always been to connect with your audience in the right place, at the right time; which means you need to meet your audience where they are spending their time. Today, that is online. 

When you think of the internet, what comes to mind? Access to worldwide information? Connection to friends, family, and customers? Streaming, shopping, and other forms of immediate gratification? Those are all valid first thoughts because that's how we use the internet on a daily basis. 

Marketing and the Internet 

The creation of the internet means people can share information and communicate from anywhere in the world as long as they have a connection. This has changed the way the world behaves. There are more than 4.5 billion active internet users today. With that many daily users, you can see why digital marketing has become essential to the Small the medium sized business (SMB) owner. The internet has shifted consumer habits when it comes to conducting research, shopping, connecting, and staying informed. To keep up, marketing had to change too. The basic foundation of marketing has always been to connect with your audience in the right place, at the right time; which means you need to meet your audience where they are spending their time. Today, that is online. 

Digital marketing has become the “norm”. We expect ads in front of YouTube videos or to appear in our Instagram feed, we know they are coming. We live in a society where we don’t necessarily see ads as an advertising measure, but as another form of media we are exposed too. Instead of checking the newspaper for new local restaurants we head to Google to look for breakfast places “near me”. Instead of calling the number we see on a bus stop, we prefer to click a link to a website and use the easily-accessible contact information.  The million dollar question remains; how does a SMB go about leveraging the digital age to grow their business? Let’s start with the customer journey.

The Customer Journey. What Does it Include?

The internet has been around for more than 40 years, but the customer journey has existed since the stone ages, so how has the internet impacted that journey? Let’s say a consumer tells a friend of theirs about your business. Friend 2, trusts Friend 1, and becomes interested in your product, so Friend 2 begins to further explore and educate themselves on what you have to offer. Friend 2 is on the “customer journey”. Here at RLP we want to help you and your business get to know this journey and process. Let's start by breaking it down into 5 stages. 

Interest & Awareness:

You must create awareness about your small business and what you offer.

How do you do this?
- Social/search advertising
- Email/text marketing 
- Loyalty programs
- YouTube / Video ads

Findability:

After becoming aware of your business through your strategic advertising, customers start to discover more with search. 
There are more places than ever where people are searching for businesses. It’s not just Google either.

There are:
- Organic Search
- PayPerClick
- Maps
- Directories and Listings (Google My Business)
- Apps
- “Near me”

Reputation:

Once a consumer finds your business, they will look at your ratings, reviews, and recommendations to help them compare choices. In fact, it’s often the first thing showcased in Google search results.

You can manage your reputation with:
- Blogs & Articles
- Reviews
- Social Media
- Friends and family

Conversion:

The next step in the consumer’s journey is finally connecting with your business. Consumers are looking for quick, easy ways to make a booking, place an order, or an appointment, etc.

You can accomplish this through:
- Website
- App
- Online booking
- Phone Call
- In-store purchase

Advocacy:

It’s important to do everything you can to encourage happy customers to return again, and tell others about you! After all, this is ultimately what brought them to you in the first place. Reaching out to them for a review helps you to stay in touch and engage with your existing customers, while at the same time receiving positive reviews and sharing them to generate new customers.

You can accomplish this by using:
- Social Posting
- Reviews
- Blog
- Word of mouth

It’s important to show up and win your customer over at every stage of the buying journey, otherwise, you could be helping drive consumers directly to your competitors. It is clear and simple when a customer is happy and satisfied they are more likely to return. Make their experience with you and your business a memorable one. When it stands out to them they are more likely to pass on the positive thoughts they have about your services. 

Let’s say the consumer is making their way along the journey. They became interested in a small business after seeing a Facebook ad, then looked up that small business and found them; but, there were multiple negative Google reviews that hadn’t been responded to. Now, they likely won’t trust this small business. What does this consumer do? It’s very likely they’ll go directly to the next stage (the buying stage), but with a competitor who has more favorable reviews, or a better reputation. This is why it’s important to win at every stage of the customer journey.

Did you learn anything? Did you enjoy reading about the customer journey? Make sure to check back in a couple weeks for more guidance on your digital marketing quest. Don't forget to follow us to learn more!