What is GoRanker?

If you haven’t got the chance to read about who we are and what’s our vision yet, let me offer you a quick summary: GoRanker is a world-wide network of like-minded digital marketing & sales professionals who provide customized local web services to business owners who want to build or enhance their digital presence. Our digital marketing services range from web design to On-Page and Off-Page SEO, PPC Campaigns, Copywriting, Social Media Marketing, Lead Generation, and many more. You can find a complete list of services here.

What is unique about us?

In a nutshell – You do the sale, We do the work.

Our approach offers our Local Partners the possibility of delivering exceptional digital marketing services while getting all the time and the flexibility needed to grow their business.

If you are a local entrepreneur or you’re thinking of becoming one, then you probably know the importance of creating the right partnerships and having the right instruments in your business arsenal. No business is 100% independent and partnering up with people that share the same values is one of the main strategies that ensure your success and growth in the long run.

As in any business, a great client portfolio starts with your customer approach and it depends on your ability to offer a five-star customer experience for the products and services you bring to the table. And we can help you with that by providing you with digital marketing resources, proprietary tools, dedicated experts and a back office team to ensure each of your projects’ successful completion.

Here’s what our Local Partner Anna Colibri, from Colibri Digital Marketing, has to say about us!

GoRanker belives into a smarter approach when talking about generating revenue to clients’ businesses and for those entrepreneurs who work in the online marketing niche.

Our network members have consumer grade dedicated tools and report analysis platforms that deliver unprecendented insights on the unique SEO and other digital marketing requirements of each client. Our approach to work is completly custom and the tools that we are using are specifically build to provide 100% accurate and trustworthy results.

The search engines constantly update their algorithms and businesses have to be prepared to face tough competition in their local markets. This is why our customer journey starts with a custom approach. We first take the time to understand their business environment and their goals, we analyze the local market and their competition, and then we give you, our Local Partner, an estimate of the work needed in order to achive your clients’ objectives.

Top 10 reasons to do business with us:

1. Succeful Stories With Proven Results
2. Technical Capabillities
3. Proprietary Analysys tools
4. R&D department
5. Unique Customer Methodology Implementation That Brings Results
6. Affordable, Transparent & Organized
7. Sales and Technical Training
8. Business Coaching
9. Huge Pool of Technical Expertise
10. Revenue Increase

And, of course, you will save time and money by outsourcing SEO and PPC to our experts

Your business is unique, and so is our approach! Become part of our TEAM today!

Why is customer experience important?

Nowadays, almost every company is working towards turning their products into compelling customer experiences. In order to do this, you need to learn how to decipher the digital footprints your customers leave behind, the same way employees are trained to ask the right questions and to read body language. Why? Because the manner customers interact with brands has been greatly influenced by the evolution of the online environment. Therefore, in order to provide a flawless and intuitive experience, each interaction a customer has with your brand must be anticipated.

A customer experience is how a customer perceives the whole process at both conscious and subconscious levels and it’s a mixture of rational performance, consumer attraction, awareness, evoked emotions, discovery, purchase and use of a specific service. By improving said process, you’ll be able to add more value, reduce cost and even build competitive advantage to your organization.

Improving Customer Experience

Digital marketing is a powerful tool in CRO. As previously stated here, 67% of customer journey is now digital, which means that digital marketing is the key to transforming a product into worthwhile customer experience.

Mobile is  becoming your customer’s first interaction with your brand and it is rapidly turning into their preferred medium for communication and consumption. According to this, 73% of mobile searches trigger some kind of action, so trying to create a seamless customer experience without a mobile-optimization mindset may be a counterproductive approach.

Paradoxically, even if presently we’re more social and connected than we’ve ever been before, it is also becoming harder and harder to connect with customers at an emotional level. The key is in developing a powerful digital strategy and effortlessly integrating online channels with existing channels, so that there is no distinction between in-shop or online experience.

First, you should ask yourself these three questions:

1. Who are your customers?
2. What is driving your customers?
3. How can you stand out from your competitors by responding to your customers’ needs?

Let us help you with the answers:

1.Customers enjoy feeling like they are understood

Although some aspects of it may seem invasive and even pushy, personalization is actually something customers appreciate. We’ve previously talked about conversion rates strategies, personalization of the customer shopping pattern being one of them. Creating comprehensive data maps by combining internal and external sources of data on customer demographics, economic, product holdings, behaviour across all devices and channels will result in a compelling and tailored customer experience.

Amazon has been doing it for years. Research shows that 60% of the customers like to feel like you really know them ( 2013 SAS survey of 1,260 US respondents)
 

2. You need to predict what a customer is going to feel like

Emotions are the basis of the majority of our decisions, whether we like it or not. Undertaking emotionally-based customer research will help you define a pattern in your customer’s browsing behavior and emotional state, determining the reasons that led them to your website and their emotional state in those particular moments. Emolytics does exactly that, through a plugin you can display on your website, designed to determine the mood of your visitors. After taking into consideration a multitude of factors, it will provide you with an in-depth analysis of your customers and, consequently, will help you improve the overall experience, making it simple, yet intuitive.

3. Create a positive consumer experience at the point of sale and post sale

Granted, staying at the top is difficult and it requires maximum use of resources and skills. That’s why a customer-centric approach can add value to your business and can enable differentiation from competitors who do not offer a similar experience.

What can truly differentiate you from your competitors is how you choose to approach the customer experience. By providing a 360 degree view of your customers’ behavior across all channels, devices, brands and product categories, thus segmenting customers in a way that will drive value to your business, you will be able to create a tailored experience like no other brand.

Case Studies

Hallmark: By understanding that the majority of the customer feedback was coming through social channels, they learned that they had to change their traditional 1-800 type of customer service and so they turned their social media channels into customer support channels.

Conclusion: they addressed the issue and adapted accordingly by understanding the power of social media.

UPS: From the very beginning, UPS has spent a lot of time and resources on making sure that they were delivering the experience their customers expected. UPS was more of a B2B environment. After this, UPS realised that every customer is unique and that led to the creation of UPS My Choice, which gives the residential consumer the possibility to choose where and when their packages will be delivered. The number of UPS customers has increased, with more than 3 million new customers enrolled in this service.

Conclusion: they perfected an already valid and functioning system by adjusting their target and personalizing deliveries according to customers’ preferences.

Conclusion

Designing and implementing tailored digital marketing strategies is the fastest way to reshape the customer experience. An improved customer journey implies more customers reached and more sales achieved.
Tell us how you you are using digital marketing to perfect your customer experience, we’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments section below.

2015 is almost over, which brings us the opportunity to reflect on this year’s experiences, insights and emergent trends in the fascinating world of digital marketing. Our conclusion is this: it all comes down to what you choose to cultivate – a consumer oriented culture with an innovative edge and an authentic value, or a logocentric brand that rides the wave of consumer expectations using hype as fuel.

What is your choice?

In order to learn how to build a strong marketing plan for your local business, you first need to fully understand the impact search engines have on our lives.

Search Engines and Their Impact On Our Lives

From an average Joe’s point of view, search engines are a gift from God. The process of finding the answer to something is not time consuming any longer and the response is immediate. Search engines allow users to compare different results in order to make an assumed decision.

But let us analyse things from a marketer’s standpoint. We, as marketers, need to understand the complex process a buyer goes through until their objective is met. Our primary directive is to help lead potential customers to our clients, as a result of their keyword search.

SCENARIO

You are  driving along a deserted road in a car that reads ‘screeching tires’ and all of a sudden, millions of marketers appear, volunteering to lead you to their Shop, a.k.a Result Page, in the hope you will fix your car there. Of course, each and every single one of these suggestions aims to be taken into account. How can you compete for a customer, when there are millions of business who will do the exact same thing that you do? For instance, some may advertise to a Car Repair Shop 25 miles from your current location while others may be only 2 miles away. Is proximity a guarantee for service quality? Some suggestions may have a stronger voice and a lower service quality. Others may have fine service standard, but lack in the marketing department.  

So, how can you attract buyers to your small business?

Types of Marketing Strategies For Promoting Local Businesses

Despite common misbelief, marketing does not only refer to advertising or sales promotion. Marketing is the process by which a business decides what, to whom, when and how will sell and then does it.

Social Marketing

A consistent online presence is they key that will make your local business be heard. It is in your business’ best interest to create an interactive online presence to engage customers. Your customers are online, so all you have to do is reach out to them. A smart social strategy will make you stand out from the hundreds similar businesses in your area.

Social Media is an easy and powerful way to drive business. Therefore, creating a sense of a community will likely draw potential customers to your local company. Be wary of what you choose to post. Internet users have a short attention span so stay clear of long text posts and opt for images with a fun twist, engaging visuals that may be both practical and inspiring.

Pro-tip: The comment section is where the community comes together. Try and start a conversation with your followers.

Pro-tip: Create an online contest. The number of participants and new potential leads will be well worth the price.

Google Local Business

Once you have created your social accounts, make sure you are local. A local business profile for all major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) is necessary. You need to fill out your business contact information  and details such as phone number, address, operating hours and so on.

Mobile Optimization

Google Analytics will show you your visitors’ behaviour, as well as whether they used the mobile version or the web platform. Not having a mobile friendly page is the same as not letting more than half of your customers in the shop. Moreover, the users’ behaviousr are different. Mobile buyers follow a different pattern than PC users. They need quick small-sized information, they tend to hurry and study shows that mobile users are impulsive and tend to spend more.

On-Page SEO

We cannot stress enough how important On-page SEO is for local businesses. Deciding which keywords to target is indeed vital. On-page optimization is as crucial to your business as using the right keywords.  

Title: It has to be short and simple. A common misbelief is that it is best if you try and cram a multitude of keywords in it. Pick a title that will attract people into clicking it.

Meta Description: Best use it as a call to action. However, if you insist on keywords, a brief description of the site is sufficient. It should not be longer than Twitter’s 140 characters and should clarify the purpose of the business without being too over-explicit. This is the best place to include the name of the city as keyword, so that users know the result is relevant to the location.

Interlinking: Organize your pages in a fluid manner so that the navigation is streamlined for your visitors.

Google+ Authorship: Implementing Google + authorship on your website will allow your image to appear next to the listing i the search results, drawing your visitor’s eyes to your site, increasing the chances they will click through.

Page Loading Time: Slow page loading time will influence web and mobile users and will have a negative impact on both web and mobile users, causing them to leave your site.

Direct Mail

Direct mail, or even direct email, is one of the greatest marketing strategies for local businesses. Did you know that 91% of consumers check their email immediately and 66% of them have made a purchase online as a result of email marketing? This adds up to a 4.300% return on investment. The key to a successful direct mail strategy is targeting audience. It is advisable you do your own research prior to sending out mail to potential customers. As for direct e-mail, if you don’t have a landing page or a website, create one. Use opt-in forms and give incentives to your online visitors to sign-up to your newsletters. Then make a list of your subscribers and break it down by geographic area, demographics and income. There are tens of free tools to help you automatize e-mail marketing campaigns, one of them being MailChimp (free for businesses with up to 2000 subscribers).

Case Study

According to a recent report from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, the year 2014 was a prolific year for entrepreneurs everywhere.

What does a small business need to thrive? A combination of hard work, drive and creativity with a dash of luck. But the most important ingredient is a sense of connectedness to a community.

Green Flash Brewing Co. is a brewery based in San Diego, California and was founded by Mike and Lisa Hinkley in 2002. Today, the company leads a team of like-minded enthusiasts who share a love for craft artisan beer. Their product is the result of labor and love, passion and zeal.

But how did they manage to thrive?

Being local is the answer. Established in 2001 as an independent local craft brewery, Green Flash achieved great success with the launch of their WestCoast IPA beer. After that, the Hinkley family realised that they hit a gold-mine: artisan beer. From here on, they developed a marketing strategy that involved expanding their product range and distribution network, while maintaining a beer-first philosophy all throughout the process. Social media has helped the company build a strong relationship with its customers locally and then nationally.

What sets this company apart from hundreds similar others?

Based in the beer wonderland that San Diego is, Green Flash managed to stand out from the 100 current operating brewhouses. The secret is the sense of community they skillfully manufactured. Being a customer meant being part of the big family that the company is all about. Staying visible at all times and constant innovations helped them expand all over the U.S. Now,based on sales volume,  they are the fourth brewery in San Diego, and 48th nationally, delivering to over 17 states.

Conclusion

Great stories like the one above teach us that there are a lot of contributing factors to great success. What we can deduce is that the quality of the service is as important as how we sell it.

It’s not a question of if and when, it’s a matter of how you do it. Grabbing the attention is no longer enough. Holding the attention is what matters most in a successful marketing strategy.

Content marketing – a necessity for every business in order to stand out from the digital crowd. But, in order to reap its benefits, it needs to be based on a solid strategy and the right tools, from sourcing content to writing it and disseminating the information. Take a look at the infographic below for some interesting data and very useful tips:

First, it was AOL, the Internet before the Internet. Community Members were now able to make Profiles and market their online personas. Ten years later, the social media business grew larger and larger, giving birth to Friendster, Myspace and LinkedIn. Facebook was rapidly followed by Twitter which meant everyone was now connected to everyone.

It’s important to keep in mind that with the rise of mobile computing, social media platforms have been divided into web-based and almost exclusively mobile-based platforms, which can only mean one thing: most platforms now specialize in targeted interaction services instead of providing a generalist social networking experience.

Social media marketing has a gigantic potential to increase sales but in order for that to happen, you need to learn how to master it. As marketing professionals, we know that choosing the right type of social media network can be a tricky process, but we put together a few guidelines to make it easier for you:

Which Social Media Network Do I Choose?

First of all, let’s take a look at some numbers.

According to Digital Insights, Facebook is the leader in the number of daily active users, followed closely by Google + and Twitter.

• Facebook:1.28 billion
• Google +540 million
• Twitter: 255 million
• Instagram:200 million
• LinkedIn: 187 million
• Pinterest: 40 million

Therefore, it is safe to say that Facebook would naturally be anyone’s number one choice.  While this may be true, there are more factors to take into account. Some other interesting figures regard the way the members are engaged in your content.

• 75% of the engagement on Facebook happens within the first 5 hours from posting, whereas only 53% of interaction between Google+ users and brand is positive.
• Tweets with image links have 5 times the engagement rate and so, 63% of brands have multiple Twitter accounts, for better visibility. Over 90% say the follow businesses to get discounts and promos and 37% of Twitter users will purchase from a brand they follow.
• 23% of teens prefer Instagram as their go-to social media network. Another interesting fact is that 98% of Instagram posts are also shared on Facebook.
• More than 40% YouTube traffic comes from mobile, leading up to a total of 4 billion videos watched everyday
• 84% of women stay active on Pinterest; However, in 2014, the number of male active users have doubled, and one third of all sign ups come from men, which is more than great news.
• In 2014, 8 out of 10 SMBs use social media for their business to drive growth and 3 out of 5 reported gaining new customers by using social media to promote their business.
• B2B marketers invest in social media to increase brand exposure ( 83% ) increase web traffic ( 69% ) and gain market insights ( 65% ).

The aim of social media marketing is to increase your website traffic by directing people to your site and helping you rank higher in searches. In order for it to work effectively, you need to come up with a suitable social strategy.

Social Media ROI by MDGadvertising

How Do I Build My Social Media Strategy?

Asking the right questions will always give you the right answers.

Social media marketing is centered around the element of humanization. People like doing business with other people. Social media is a place where brands have the liberty to act as people do, creating meaningful bonds by networking wisely and efficiently.

In order to attract and engage social media followers and ideally convert them into customers, you need to map out a clear social media marketing strategy. To ease the process, start by asking yourself these questions:

1. What does my company want to achieve?

Do you want to advertise your business, interact with customers or just promote? Creating a meaningful connection with your followers is as important as generating leads. Social media can help you generate traffic and rank high in searches as well as raise your brand awareness and attract new potential customers.

2. Should my company be present on all social media networks?

It should depend on your profile. Most SMBs start with a blog and two or three platforms ( most preferred in terms of SEO are Twitter and Google +). The purpose is to find what works best for your business and not waste time and money on networks that are ineffective for  you.

3. How often should I post?

It is essential to have a permanent presence on social media. However, posting too much too often will always seem a bit forced and slightly aggressive. Two to five  times a day is more than enough. Stagger your posts consistently.

4. What should I post?

Depending on your profile, you can opt for visuals, such as infographics, videos and images, or you can choose to share articles, links or a combination of all these.

5. What are the best tools for my SM strategy?

Depending on how much time do you have to invest in managing your multiple SM accounts, there are various tools to help you maintain a permanent and consistent presence.

– Hootsuite will help you stay organized. It is one of the many tools for managing your multiple social network accounts.  It can enable you to keep track of mentions and comments, it makes it easier for you to have instant access to all messages and most importantly it allows you to monitor multiple streams simultaneously.

–SumAll will give you access to you social media management reports. Once you connect your accounts, it starts pulling data and insights, delivering it as a report you can check daily by logging in or at the end of the week, via email.

–SocialHunt will help you stay in touch with your followers. This tool helps you monitor a group of chosen profiles without constantly visiting each network separately so you never miss any updates from your preferred users.

6. How can I outline a social media marketing strategy?

• Start by choosing your social media dashboard. It feels less overwhelming when you can access all your accounts from one place.
• Analyze who is engaging with your content and then segment your audience for a more targeted experience.
• Always compare your results. It is important to take it gradually. Set new milestones every week.

7. What Does My Business Need?

Your social success depends on the type of business you own and how much time you intend on investing.

FACEBOOK

 – Great starting point for your business, regardless of your profile.

  -It works equally great with image sharing and written content.

  -It is low maintenance in terms of frequency in posting.

TWITTER

• Also suitable for almost any type of business
• Good for spreading the word and keeping in touch with your followers
• Try and avoid posting exclusively your own content. The Retweet feature  is for sharing other users’ content, with a higher chance of getting more followers or going viral.
• It is important to share your audience’s content, so it doesn’t seem like you are only interested in what your company is doing.

INSTAGRAM

• Instagram is a network owned by facebook and it focuses on visual content.
• It is almost entirely mobile. The web version does not allow you to take or upload photos.
• Both Twitter and Instagram use the Hashtag ( # ) in order to connect more easily. Using trending hashtags will increase the chances of your business to be more visible.
• It is suited for most businesses. Instagram is a way of humanizing, of letting your followers behind the scenes. You can either use it as an alternative network, just for displaying the human part of the business, or as the main network when your business is based on selling an image ( be it the fashion industry, health and lifestyle, retail etc).

PINTEREST (STUMBLEUPON, TUMBLR)

-They are all image sharing based networks.

– Best suited for business with an artistic and creative profile. Numbers show that Pinterest is 84% used by women who are interested in crafting, creative ideas and parenting and lifestyle advice. This does not mean that businesses outside these categories cannot reach their goals on these platforms. It just shows that you will benefit more from using these networks if you work in these areas.

Case Study

If you think this is overwhelming and way too much to take in, just remember that even a teenager can do it. Eighteen year old Facebook user Fionna managed to raise 8 Million GBP though her ‘’No Makeup Selfie’’ campaign. She asked women to post photos of themselves, make up free, to raise cancer awareness. What her success is owed to, is her crucial decision of creating the #nomakeupselfie hashtag. Her campaign was getting more and more visibility and people contacted Cancer Research to ask if the campaign were theirs. Cancer Research then replied by posting their own #nomakeupselfie and within hours, it went viral. TV, radio, online news article began spreading and sharing the image, along with the donation code. In only a week’s time, Cancer Research raised over 8 Million GBP. This campaign resulted in over 800,00 Facebook likes, more than 120,000 followers on Twitter and 8 Million in one week.

This campaign, as successful as it was, it was merely a happy accident. Imagine what mapping out a solid strategy could do for your business. This strategy worked because of the wonders of #Piggybacking, which is the process of extending your message beyond usual parameters by relating it to a popular trend.

What to learn:

#The importance of hashtags, piggybacking and relating to popular trends

#Appealing to people’s good nature and altruism will always work

#People like to be part of something, they like posting about themselves, if this means they are part of a community. Engage your followers in trends of our own and see how they work for you. Experiment. Aim to go viral by asking users to nominate friends.

Word of mouth is the best campaign you could wish for.

As a conclusion, if you want to create an enviable social media marketing strategy, you first need to get familiarized with most social networks, figure out which will work best for your business by testing platforms as well as content, create a plan and focus on the networks that will best reflect your business’ angle and mission.