You aren’t alone. It’s no secret that the results emanating from social media and paid ads are not delivering the way they used to. We have been fighting to get engagement, and it just seems like it is a losing battle. The few likes, comments, and shares we get are great, but they are clearly not converting to closed business. We are getting thousands of impressions on paid ads only to see high bounce rates and, again, low conversions. Brand recognition is great, but if it does not turn into actual money in the bank, we are just wasting our time. 

Social media feeds are overflowing with wish posts about COVID-19, conspiracy theories, Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, Trump, Biden and a myriad of other political-based articles, and your posts are getting lost in all the noise. 

People are turning away from social media and outbound marketing efforts. People are no longer finding you on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Interruption marketing is becoming a dinosaur, and people are wondering how to put their brand assets in front of qualified and interested buyers. So what is working? That is the million-dollar question. Fortunately, we have an answer. 

1. Organic search.
2. The Google My Business app.
3. Inbound marketing programs.

Organic search has been an effective strategy for a long time, but because of the effectiveness of social media and the ability to drive website traffic through paid ads, it is something we all let go by the wayside. Staying on top of search was sometimes confusing, sometimes elusive, and oftentimes expensive. With folks turning away from social media, we are now finding it absolutely necessary. Buyers are starting their search for most products and services with a quick Google Search. Yes, some other search engines have a piece of the action, but if you look at these numbers provided by StatCounter, you see that Google Search equates to 87.61% of the market share, with Bing at 7.02% and Yahoo at 3.38%. I don’t know about you, but I think I would rather place my time, money and resources by fishing in the right pond: Google. Wondering how to increase your chances of being at the top of Google pages for your keywords? We will get to that shortly.

One more note on search: We are seeing a large increase in video at the top of many search results, especially in categories such as reviews, how-to videos, tutorial videos and videos that are fitness- or sports-related. The trick is finding a way to adopt these types of videos for your business. 

Google My Business is highly underused by businesses. We tend to have a “set it and forget it” mentality when we should be spending as much time working on this as on our social media channels. Think about your own behavior when you run a search and someone’s Google My Business page shows up. All the information you see on that page can in many cases pre-empt the need for others to visit your website. Wondering what are the best practices for optimizing your GMB page? I have included a link to a great article below. 

Outbound and interruption marketing are quickly being replaced by systems that are not only automated but effective. Having a system that attracts, educates and sends interested qualified buyers to your site is what is winning the game these days. That system? Inbound marketing—specifically, video inbound marketing. VIM is becoming a paramount system. As mentioned earlier, Google is frequently placing videos at the top of its search results. More on that in a bit.

Inbound marketing-utilizing systems such as HubSpot can tie into all of your marketing efforts to produce results. You don’t need to take my word for it, though. Check out HubSpot for everything you need to know on why inbound marketing is effective.

At the top of that inbound funnel is content, content, content. Leading the charge in content right now is video. Video is replacing blog content for the simple reason that people will watch a 1-2- minute video before taking the time to read anything. You know it’s true because you do the same thing. If a video is tagged properly, named correctly, has a good thumbnail image and has a description that quickly tells you it is relevant, you will pick that over written content more often than not. 

So what do you do? You have options, but the first thing you should do is allocate time, money and resources to creating content. Content creation gives you the top-of-the-funnel asset you need to run a successful inbound marketing program. Videos and blogs are the key. That does not mean you should skip the blogging. We suggest a combination of both video and blog creation. Creating videos that people will watch and posting them on YouTube is only part of the game. While video can be more effective than blogs, it is not simply creating a video and placing it on YouTube. You need to be sure that titles, tags, thumbnails and descriptions are on point for what your prospects will be searching for. We recommend embedding these videos into a written blog that discusses the video and maybe encourages a reader to watch it. This allows two pieces of content from every video asset created. It also helps you show up in both video search results and keyword search results. When done properly, you can really get great results just with organic search from these efforts.

Well, I think you should reach out to us for a conversation, but my guess is that you are going to do some searches first, probably on Google. A search may even be what led you here in the first place. This in and of itself showcases what we just discussed. 

Looking for that link to optimize your Google My Business page? Here it is.