Marketing in the simplest form is being where your customers, or your potential customers, are.
JB Kellogg is the Co-Founder, Co-CEO and COO at Madwire, a technology company that provides business management and marketing software and services for SMBs and franchises. Madwire’s brands enable SMBs to do everything from building a website to creating multi-channel digital advertising campaigns.
Since 2009, Madwire’s mission is to enrich communities by helping small businesses, and their local communities, grow.
In this episode of Velocitize Talks, Kellogg shares his insights into how digital marketing relies on SMB storefronts to provide an engaging user experience.
The Covid Challenge (1:08)
The biggest challenge for small businesses is building their customer relationships and customer experiences in the digital world.
Due to the closures of many SMB storefronts due to Covid-19, businesses realized their physical locations were no longer the best way to attract and retain customers. Pivoting to an online storefront became mandatory. Additionally customers expected their shopping experiences to be similar, if not better, than before.
This was a challenge that many small businesses faced in building one-to-one digital relationships in a multi-channel world. “I think it’s a blessing because it’s allowed businesses to break the mold of what they were stuck in before and really start to evolve, which needed to happen,” Kellogg says. “This just accelerated it.”
SMB storefronts that are still standing implemented innovative marketing strategies to evolve and overcome their newest challenge—operating in a pandemic. They made a strategic decision to adjust, not give up.
The Value of Content (3:12)
If you can provide value for free to people, that builds trust, and trust is the most important piece to earning a new customer.
“People don’t do business with people they don’t trust,” Kellogg says. One way to build that trust is to give your audience something they value: great content. This could be educational, inspirational, engaging or entertaining.
Great content can increase awareness of your brand and attract a loyal following. This in turn builds a tribe and eventually converts them into customers, Kellogg says. According to Content Marketing Institute statistics, innovative content marketing can drive conversion rates by 600%—making it a worthwhile investment.
Captivated Audience (4:16)
Marketing in the simplest form is being where your customers, or your potential customers, are.
Valuable content alone isn’t a viable marketing strategy. Even if the content has been created with a specific audience in mind, it’s important to find your audience. That way you can place your quality brand content for them to find it, read it, share it, and interact with it.
“I think what small businesses could improve on is actually putting time and effort behind creating valuable content in the channels where their consumers are, which isn’t on every social channel,” says Kellogg.
Identifying your audience is key, as is creating your target persona to successfully research and connect with customers.
SMB Storefronts that Wow (5:30)
The website is your digital headquarters in the digital world. It’s almost even more important now to make sure that your website is amazing.
People judge businesses by their website now more than ever. According to Stanford University, 75% of people judge the credibility of a company based on the design of its website. It’s critical for a website, then, to be well-designed, easily navigable, engaging and informative.
A business’s website is where product information can be found, as well as where all of the dynamic content lives.
That said, each product or service in your e-commerce storefronts needs a designated section with videos, case studies, infographics and compelling content. This content is then distributed on social media and other marketing channels to build and strengthen the business’s reputation.
Up the User Experience (10:08)
You need to make sure that your brand’s website and social media is a cohesive brand with a cohesive message; the right audience will start to follow you and engage with you.
Another critical part of digital marketing is the user experience, or a visitor’s experience with your digital spaces. In fact the top two Google ranking factors are great content as well as a great user experience. Kellogg emphasizes reviewing the content metrics as well as your site’s analytics to identify the content your audience wants.
Content has the ability to connect and build trust with your audience. When sharing content on social media, be sure to use the appropriate hashtags and categorize content so it can be found easily.
When considering content and website flow, “it should be so easy your grandma could get in there and find exactly what she needs within a minute or less (more like 10 seconds),” says Kellogg. “Otherwise you’ll see a high bounce rate.”
For more information on Madwire, check out their website and follow them on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter at @Madwire. To stay up to date with Kellogg, follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.