When our team was just starting out, we had a preconceived notion that email marketing was outdated. We thought, “Why would a business waste hours on creating emails that were going to inevitably be sent to the trash or spam folder?”

Boy, were we wrong. We quickly learned that email marketing was and continues to be a very valuable technique to retain users, keep them loyal to your brand, and guide them through the buying journey.

Email marketing is also a very cost effective form of marketing. A study completed in 2015 by the DMA reported that for every £1 spent on email marketing, an average return of £38 could be expected. This was a huge increase from the £24.93 reported just two years before. There are few strategies or techniques proven to be as successful for return on investment as email marketing.

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is pretty self explanatory. A business builds an email list (hopefully of opted-in candidates), creates emails that drive users to a task, and strategically send those emails to their contact list.

These emails can be weekly or monthly newsletters, new product releases, news, updates, deals, sales, reminders, etc. You can also use programs that send automated emails reminding users of abandoned carts, coupon codes or deals they haven’t used yet, welcome messages, or birthday wishes.

Retain customers and increase brand loyalty

Each email is a reminder that the brand exists and cares enough to reach out to their customers. An email can be a nudge that convinces your user to return to an abandoned cart, an invite to follow on social media, or a deal the user can’t help but return to use. If your brand is memorable, your customer is much more likely to use your services or buy your products in the future.

Email marketing and CRM

Email marketing can be an important portion of your customer relationship management (CRM.) CRM is a strategy that analyzes data about the history of users interacting with your brand to improve your future interactions and maintain a relationship with your customer. By evaluating the customer and their previous history with your business, you can better interact with that customer and more accurately target future users.

A CRM system can be invaluable to a business and there are many to choose from that can be integrated into your website and analytics. Our go-to is a free CRM by Hubspot. It’s simple to install, easy to use, and best of all, it’s totally free. IntellaSphere is another CRM with a free option worth noting. They also have paid tiers with features that may be valuable to your business.

How do you build an email subscriber list?

It can be vastly important for a business to build a subscriber list. These users opt in for future promotional ads and can be used again and again, as long as they stay subscribed. You can advertise the benefits of becoming a subscriber on your website or you can automatically opt in users who sign up or make an account on your website.

The first step to building a subscriber list is to create a sign-up form on your website. You can build a pop up that directs users to sign up when they first view the site, or you can pepper it around the website, in blogs, on social media, or even paid ads. Even placing a sign up form at a physical event or tradeshow can add more subscribers to your list. The strategies are up to you and the avenues you see fit to best advertise your newsletter.

Incentivize subscriptions

Entice users to sign up by offering an incentive for the use of their email. No one wants to sign up for spam. This can be a deal, discount code, free product, important or useful articles or information, contest entry, etc. The sky’s the limit. Just make sure what you’re offering is enough to encourage users to sign up. Don’t bait and switch. You’re likely to lose the subscriber if they don’t receive what was promised.

Why you shouldn’t buy email lists

You may receive offers to buy email lists, though we don’t recommend this because it’s a shady tactic to email users who haven’t blatantly opted in to your ads. In a worst case scenario, it can get your mailing platform account, email, or even the entire domain shut down by Icann.

Don’t get sent to spam!

If an email gets flagged as spam, all other emails you send that user will be sent to spam, losing a valuable subscriber along the way. If enough of your emails are marked as spam, Google and other email platforms may mark your entire email as a source of spam and direct every email you send straight to spam folders. It’s also likely to affect other people using the same servers as you to send the email. This is just a bad move for everyone involved. You may also waste money on emails that aren’t even real or useful. The best technique is to offer a benefit and let the subscribers come to you.

Where should my emails direct users?

Your emails should direct users to satisfy your goals. If your goal is to increase users’ time on page, sending them to a blog article may be advantageous. If the goal is to increase sales, sending them to your shop page or a specific product could help. If you want to get more likes or followers on social media, sending them to some great content on your profile may be just the boost you need. Each email should have a goal and the links in your email should drive all users to attain your goals.

Compelling Calls to Action

Be sure to use powerful CTAs (calls to action) in your emails and make them really obvious. You could use “buy now” or “learn more,” but those CTAs don’t really invoke a strong feeling in your user and are less likely to convince your user to click than a CTA that makes them curious to see what’s behind the button. A stronger CTA in this case would be “take the test and find out…” or “discover your true…” or “get your free…” I like to make my links bright, unmistakable buttons so they can’t be missed.

When should I email my subscribers?

All the time. It may seem like spam to you, but reminding your users your brand exists is vastly important. Monthly or weekly newsletters are pretty reasonable and are unlikely to overwhelm a user as long as the content is valuable. Use these to update your user on new releases and sales, events, etc.

Sometimes you can get away with multiple emails a week if you’re offering something worthwhile or reminding users that “time is running out” on a great deal, though you can definitely lose subscribers this way if you do it too often.

How can I send many emails without seeming spamy?

The best strategy to send many emails without scaring away subscribers is to offer valuable content in your emails. Users are likely to stay engaged if they are receiving great deals or information they actually want to use.

Your emails must also employ attention-grabbing or enticing subject lines and excerpts, otherwise they can get lost in their sea of emails. Also ensure your emails are clear, visually pleasing, and free from spelling or grammar errors. Spelling and grammar errors are usually a quick indicator of spam mail.

What mass email platforms can I use?

There are many options for mass emailing platforms. Mailchimp offers 2,000 contacts with 10,000 free emails a month with paid plans for users that need to send more. Hubspot CRM free marketing tools offer 2,000 emails per month with a paid upgraded version. Constant Contact offers unlimited emails starting at $20 a month, so it’s a great contender to consider for a business that needs to send a lot of emails for a small investment. Most platforms offer customizable templates and make designing custom emails fast and easy. These platforms also give analytics on the campaigns and customers.

The price and feature differentiation between platforms is vast. The paid plans for Mailchimp start at $9.99 and the paid version of Hubspot’s marketing tools cost $800 per month. The services provided by each platform overlap and vary, so it’s really up to you and your needs to determine what platform will be best for your business.

How do I track campaigns?

Your chosen email platform should do most of the work. You can use their analytics and integrate them with your CRM to really dive deep into the data. The email platform should track open rate and click through rate on its own.

And adding unique tracking codes (UTM) to your emails can help you record the customer’s journey. A UTM tracking code is a URL that redirects to your landing page so you can track which users are coming from your email. Without a UTM tracking code, it’s difficult to identify which users that visited your website came from the email.

Depending on the platform and features, you can also A/B test your emails to determine the successfulness of each email structure, offer, call to action, etc. This is also valuable for categorizing your subscribers. If you find some users are more likely to buy, complete a desired action, or just interact more with specific types of emails, you can separate them from the main list and market to them differently than the rest of your subscribers.

Conclusion

Email marketing is an invaluable tool for many businesses. Its low cost and high return on investment makes it one of the best tactics you can implement to retain customers and boost conversions. At Symphysis, we highly recommend implementing an email strategy and offer consulting to help your team make the most of your email marketing strategies. Contact us today to speak with one of our consultants.

Content:

1. What is Keyword Optimization?
2. Importance of Keywords in SEO
3. Best Tools for keyword optimization in 2019
4. Best tips and strategies for Keyword Optimization
5. Conclusion

What is Keyword Optimization?

Keyword Optimization can be described as the process of researching, structuring, analyzing, and implementing the best and most relevant keywords to your website to increase its search rankings. Keyword Optimization helps search engines decide if your website content is relevant to a search query. Search engines reference the usage of the specific keywords searched for against the content on your website and others like yours to determine each website’s position on the search engine results.

The process starts with keyword targeting. This is the practice under which you research what keywords are used most frequently by your target customer base to search for relevant products/services or content that your website is offering. Afterwards, comes the on-page SEO step of writing valuable content rich with keywords. These keywords should be relevant to what your customers are actually searching and should be kept to a reasonable level. Spamming keywords is frowned upon by search engines and may reduce the visibility of your website. For example ‘Marketing firm in Seattle’ carries the following keywords relevant-

(Source: Keywords Everywhere extension for Chrome)

You should focus on using these and other relevant keywords for searches related to ‘Marketing firm in Seattle’.

Importance of Keyword Optimization in SEO

Keywords optimization helps boost your organic traffic and search ranking. SEO is one of the greatest marketing tools of the digital marketing age. It not only it helps you connect with more potential customers, it also provides a great database for information on potential customer base. Through research. you can analyze the behaviors and lifestyle preferences of your customers to modify your market campaigns and boost goodwill for your website.

Best Tools for Keyword Optimization in 2019

• Answer the Public.

Answer the Public is a great tool for commercial blogging and generating traffic towards your blog via keyword optimization. It is especially helpful for keywords optimization for smaller businesses which require ultra-specific keywords to rank in search engine results. When you search a topic, Answer the Public will generate a list of the most popular searches related to that subject, sorted by rankings. It’s a great tool for blog keyword optimization and for finding blog topics. The platform allows only a limited number of free searches a day, so make each free search count.

• Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is an efficient keyword analysis and management tool which can be used as an extension for Chrome and Firefox browsers. Keywords Everywhere shows valuable data for your search query and related queries that may result in more keywords. This add-on provides search volume, CPC (cost per click), & competition for every keyword in the search box. It also shows what keywords your most popular competitors are using. Keywords Everywhere is also helpful for paid Search Engine Marketing campaigns and works alongside Google Keyword Planner to provide valuable data for your campaign targeting.

• Google Analytics

Google Analytics offers you the power to monitor every kind of traffic you can imagine on your website. It also offers feedback on which keywords visitors use to reach your web pages, which makes it an essential tool for traffic monitoring and content optimization.

• XML sitemaps

XML site maps (with a robots.txt file) allows and guides search engine crawlers to crawl and index all the pages of a website sufficiently, involving sorting by keywords as well. Hence XML sitemaps help improve search rankings by enhancing the rankings of a website in a search result.

• SERP robot

SERP robot connects directly to your website’s rankings. You can check your website’s rankings for up to five different keywords to see where your website stands. Not only that, but it allows you to check and compare with other websites’ rankings as well, making it an effective tool for competitor analysis.

Best Tips for Keyword Optimization

• Focus on ultra-specific keywords for small businesses (also known as long-tail keywords analysis). This is especially helpful for local organizations offering specific products. For example, the keyword ‘Haircut salon Greater Seattle’ is better optimized for a saloon in Greater Seattle than let’s say ‘Haircut salon’. Although these need not always be location based, for example ‘Black leather formal shoes nike at discounted price’ is another long tail keyword, emphasizing on the ‘discounted price’ phrase conjoined with ‘black leather formal shoes nike’ to make it ultra-specific.

• Make sure to optimize title tags, images, and tags. Title tags are the first thing that web crawlers as well as the traffic on your website read. Image text should be added in the alt attribute of the image as well as its file name, otherwise crawlers and search engines do not recognize images as pieces of content but simply take them as blank blocks. An image without an alt attribute is a missed opportunity for extra keywords and a potential penalty toward your site from search engines.

• Focus on developing a user friendly site structure. While keyword optimization can improve your search ranking, it is bounce rate that determines the public’s verdict on the content of your website. Bounce rate is the percentage of traffic that leaves the website after viewing only one page. Some website tend to go overboard with keyword stuffing and fail to produce on-point and relevant content. You should focus more on producing quality content over quantity so as to minimize bounce rate and cater to your traffic’s actual needs.

• Decrease your bounce rate by creating an organized list of keywords with proper segmentation to improve landing page relevance. You should pre-determine what keywords you will be using in what type of content by researching and comparing the most popular keywords in the categories. It can greatly reduce time, effort, and cost put into optimizing and researching for different pieces of content.

• Audit your keywords time to time taking mobile users in considerations. Editing the contents of your website to keep up with the trends and search patterns is an excellent idea to keep up to date with the ever changing search dynamics, especially for mobile users. Nearly 60% of all search queries made on Google are on mobile devices. Moreover, data released by Google shows that a 53% of users bounce off a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. This shows not only the importance of loading speed optimization, but also content optimization for mobile users.

Conclusion

Google claims to have hundreds of factors when it comes to ranking. However the above listed SEO strategies and tools have proven to be repeatedly effective. It is important to stay dynamic and optimize your content as fresher ranking factors are introduced. Search Engine Optimization can be a tricky concept to understand and even trickier to tackle. However, with expert guidance it can be used to the best of your interests.

We Can help!

Symphysis maximizes the number of times you appear in organic search queries. Our SEO team begins by reducing loading time, improving image quality, removing leftover template code, implementing analytics, all while improving keyword ranking. For more information and a free initial consultation, call or text @ +1 (425) 390-4738.

Further Reading-

Importance of Market Segmentation in 2019

Marketing guide for small businesses in 2019

Guide to creating and running marketing campaigns

Best marketing research tools 2019

Search Engine Optimization vs Search Engine Marketing

Best paid and free SEO tools

The four Ps of Marketing

Major types of Market

The Basics of Search Engine Optimization

The Importance of Backlinking in SEO in 2019

Industry Analysis

Various Types of Advertisement

All about Branding

The Basics of Start-up marketing

The Basics of Targeted Marketing

Contents:

1. What is Market Segmentation (with examples of marketing segmentation)?
2. The importance of market segmentation.
3. Types of market segments
4. The segmentation process
5. Best tips for market segmentations
6. Conclusion

What is Market Segmentation?

Market segmentation is the process of categorizing potential and actual customer base, into under various categories such as age, sex, location, preferences, income, etc. This ensures better targeting, increased ROI, lower wastage of marketing budget, and aids in broadening the product range and variations.

For example, a shampoo may be sold in sachets, tubes, or bottles, targeting different income groups. Similarly, most bigger fast food chains sell various local flavors for different countries they operate in to cater to the flavor palette of the region. Selling a product with different scents, such as deodorant, is appealing to segmented market based on their preferences.

The importance of market segmentation.

Market segmentation helps organize a businesses’ activities from production to promotions. Targeting should be the first step before starting any kind of marketing process. We have talked about this point in depth in our detailed article about targeted marketing as well as in our guide to creating and running marketing campaigns.

Market Segmentation clarifies your market’s needs. Targeting is where and how your budget should be applied based on the market segmentation. Segmentation is also greatly helpful for individual marketing campaigns, as it can guide you on how to apply various campaigning strategies on different demographics of customers.

Types of market segments

Segmentation can be made on the basis of one or more of the following:

• Demographic Segmentation.

This includes variables such as age, gender, level of education, level of income, family status, etc. This is the most popular type of segmentation as it helps businesses of all sizes and types to organize their audience into smaller and easier segments.

• Geographic and cultural Segmentation

Geographic segmentation, when done on a wider level, becomes cultural segmentation. Geographic segmentation can consist of anything from suburban to international level. For example, larger fast food companies serve local flavors of their products in each country they operate.

• Behavioral Segmentation

Behavioral Segmentation relies on learning a buyer’s existing purchasing patterns to divide them based on factors such as retailer preferences, usage occasion, purchase frequency, etc.

• Psychographic Segmentation

Psychographic Segments consists of divisions based on social or personal characteristics such as lifestyle choices, interests and opinions, personality, values, etc.   

The segmentation process

• Marketing and industry research. It is important to know what your market is before deciding what part of it you need to market to and how. Conducting proper marketing and industry research with adequate research tools and strategies is the first step towards effective segmentation.

• Determine on what basis you will be dividing the market. For local businesses, smaller criteria such as demographic and psychographic data could be valuable.

• Conduct online and offline research about the actual statistical distribution of your target demographic. Next step is to gather data about your potential customer base. This can be done online or offline with marketing strategies and online tools like MyBestSegments, USA GOV statistics, or traditional questionnaires, surveys, and focus groups.

• Establish your customer base. It is best to express the number in a relative term like in percentages or a pie chart. You should focus on marketing to the segment which is most likely to purchase the products/services as initial testing.

Best tips for market segmentation 2019

• Be dynamic with trends and market needs. Segments, especially those based on behavioral and psychographic tendencies, are more likely to be dynamic in nature. It is advised that you keep updating and revising your marketing segments when necessary.

• Make sure your data is measurable and comparable. Data should be presented in relative and quantitative terms. Data from various segments should also be comparable to each other, in case the need for grouping arises. For example, if people from a different geographical location move to another place and their consumption habits are changed, the data between the two should be comparable such that now they can combined into one segment.

• Be realistic about your marketing approaches towards each customer base. It is advised to appeal to the beliefs and lifestyles of each individual segment. The customer should ideally derive a sense of belonging towards your brand, which is achieved mainly by appealing to their belief, lifestyle, and cultural choices.

• Group similar segments together. You should keep the number of segments to a number as low as possible so that the process of segmentation becomes easier and actionable. For example, suppose you have two segments with people who are interested in sports and people who are active at gyms. You can combine them under one category as people interested in physical activities.

Conclusion

Marketing Segmentation, when done correctly, could be the key to a long chain of successful and profitable marketing decisions and increased ROI. Not only does it help target your customer base, but helps in every aspect of decision making for your business. Therefore it often becomes important that all personal and professional efforts are put into its planning and execution.

We can help!

Symphysis believes in marketing from the ground up. With our team of dedicated experts we can help in locating your ideal market, segmentation, campaigning, search engine optimization, and creating your own successful brand. For more information call or text @+1 (425) 390-4738 for a free initial consultation

Further Reading-

Best SEO checklist for new websites in 2019

Marketing guide for small businesses in 2019

Guide to creating and running marketing campaigns

Best marketing research tools 2019

Search Engine Optimization vs Search Engine Marketing

Best paid and free SEO tools

The four Ps of Marketing

Major types of Market

The Basics of Search Engine Optimization

The Importance of Backlinking in SEO in 2019

Industry Analysis

Various Types of Advertisement

All about Branding

The Basics of Start-up marketing

The Basics of Targeted Marketing

Contents:

1. The Importance of Search Engine Optimization in 2019
2. Simple yet effective 10 point SEO checklist for launching a website in 2019
3. Conclusion

The Importance of Search Engine Optimization in 2019

The importance of SEO can be determined in terms of discoverability and Goodwill. Given the cut-throat competition these days, it has become a necessity to stay current in every aspect of business to increase your brand’s goodwill and gain a competitive advantage over other businesses in the industry. It is very effective when it comes to boosting your organic revenue since it drives more potential customers towards your brands via search results.

Check out our detailed article on basics of Search Engine Optimization for more on SEO or best free and paid SEO tools  for a list of tools and services to help boost SEO ranking after launching your site.

Simple yet effective 10 point SEO checklist for launching a website in 2019

• Install Google Search Console and Google Analytics on your website to track performance.

Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster tools) allows users to check indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites. It measures your site’s search and ranking performance and suggests methods to improve these metrics.

Google Analytics is Google’s free reporting marketing tool that monitors and reports in-depth data about the traffic on your website. It measures things like age, gender, interest, device and location of your audience. It also provides reports on bounce rate (the rate that measures the percentage of people leaving your website after visiting one page) and suggests ways to address the issues leading potential customers to leave the site.

• Make sure to polish your landing pages.

Landing pages are the pages that show up on Google’s search results when someone conducts a search. A landing page is the first page a user visits on your site, so it needs to lead the user toward your desired page or action.

In the previous point I talked about bounce rate. Google lists it as one of the most important ranking factors, among other things. It is very important to have an interactive and user-friendly UI (User Interface) to keep users your website for a longer period of time. It’s also important to link your pages to create a web of connections that lead your users throughout your website to increase the time on site.

• Reduce Load Time

Perhaps the biggest factor when it comes to bounce rate is loading time. Studies have shown that people do not wait more than 10 seconds for a web page to load before leaving a website. Moreover, data released by Google shows that 53% of mobile users leave the site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Therefore, it is important to reduce loading time by methods such as image optimization, removal of leftover code, cutting down on external scripts, making use of caching systems, etc.

• Optimize loading time and landing pages for mobile devices

Approximately 60% of all Google searches are conducted on mobile devices. Google also claims to place mobile compatibility as one of the major SEO ranking factors. The length of time users wait for a page to load is reduced on mobile devices compared to computers, hence it is necessary for a website to be compatible for mobile devices and maintain an attractive mobile interface.

In response to the growing numbers of users searching on mobile devices, Google recently announced that new websites will be indexed primarily through their mobile version. Over time, Google will be migrating most websites to mobile-first indexing. This means reducing the load time and optimizing for mobile will be that much more important.

• Follow the proper keyword research and target highly specific searches

Every search consists of keywords that (hopefully) link the user to relevant information. For new websites it is advised to focus on more specific keyword strings (also called long tail keywords). These are the strings of words that direct users who are looking for something very specific to your website. This ensures improved targeting and is cost efficient.

For example, an article about your product could include terms like “Where to buy…” or “…in Seattle” to rank higher in searches using those specific keywords.

Check out our list of best free and paid SEO tools to learn how and where to conduct keyword research.

• Link to relevant internal and external webpages in your content.

Backlinking is still one of the most important ranking factors in 2019. Adding relevant links to your own and other websites not only makes it easier for crawlers to discover your site, but it also boosts the credibility of your website.

• Focus on On-Page Optimization

On page optimization includes factors such optimization of title tag, meta description, image optimization, URL optimization, keyword optimization, and Backlinking.

• Title tags should be short and to the point. All sources will tell you a different number, but search engines may not read past 50-60 characters or around 9-12 words of the title tag. Your main keywords should be at the beginning in case the end of the title is not read.
• Meta description is the small block of text that appears beneath the title of your page on a search engine result. Search engines read this, but so does the consumer. Together, relevant titles and meta description should guide users to your link over another web page.
• Image Optimization is the process of using appropriate file types, sizing images appropriately, and filling out the meta information for the image to reduce load time and bounce rate. Search engines like to deliver relevant information quickly, so a page with a faster load time with the image alt tags filled out may outperform its competitors.
• URL optimization should follow the format of website/category/relevant webpage. For example the URL for Wikipedia’s webpage on Marketing Strategy is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_strategy, simple yet comprehensive.
• Keyword Optimization in on-page SEO refers to writing content with well-researched keywords that are relevant to the contents of your website. Search engines will rank your website higher if your page contains relevant information to the search, especially long tail keywords.
• Backlinking is still one of the most important SEO ranking factors. Linking back to credible sources helps Google crawler find your site as well, creating a web of content search engines can connect and learn from. It also increases your chances for getting linked back from other websites as it makes it easier to find your content. You should link your own and others’ sites whenever it is relevant.

• Focus on local ranking factors for small and medium businesses.

For a website interested primarily in local targeting, local targeting factors such as long-tail SEO, local link-building, Google reviews, locality based bounce rate, etc. should be given priority.

Neilsen MyBestSegments is a brilliant and creative tool for medium and small scale enterprises. You can analyze a local area’s consumption habits and demographic details, along with shift in consumption habits and trends as well. It is good for launching a targeted marketing campaign locally. It can also be helpful for competitor analysis to a great extent.

• Add a robots.txt file to your website and maintain a XML sitemap Robots.txt file is how Google crawler finds and lists a site. It tells crawlers what to list and what not to list. Google ranks web pages and not just websites. XML sitemap becomes relevant here because it is essentially a directory of all the pages on a site. It makes it much easier for crawlers to find out your website and rank your pages accordingly.

• Produce relevant and quality content.

Now that you have managed achieved a click to your landing page, the next important step is to keep the user there to improve your bounce rate. Even if the user doesn’t make a purchase, their time on page is valuable and could result in higher search engine ranking.

To keep a user on your page you must offer them superior value via your blogs, offers, etc. A user isn’t going to stay on a page for very long if it isn’t offering something of value.

Especially if you are blogging and/or producing content, it is necessary that the keywords that lead to your site are relevant to the actual search queries of your audience and are not simply a case of keyword stuffing. In any case, Black Hat SEO is not recommended since Google is vigilant about SEO tactics that try to cheat the system and will penalize your site if need be.

Conclusion

Google claims to have hundreds of factors when it comes to ranking. However the above listed SEO strategies and tools have proven to be repeatedly effective. It is important to stay dynamic and optimize your content as fresher ranking factors are introduced.

Search Engine Optimization is a lengthy process that never really ends. However with expert guidance it can be used to the best of your interests.

We Can help!

Symphysis maximizes the number of times you appear in organic search queries. Our SEO team begins by reducing loading time, improving image quality, removing leftover template code, implementing analytics, all while improving keyword ranking. For more information and a free initial consultation, call or text @ +1 (425) 390-4738.

Further Reading-

Marketing guide for small businesses in 2019

Guide to creating and running marketing campaigns

Best marketing research tools 2019

Search Engine Optimization vs Search Engine Marketing

Best paid and free SEO tools

The four Ps of Marketing

Major types of Market

The Basics of Search Engine Optimization

The Importance of Backlinking in SEO in 2019

Industry Analysis

Various Types of Advertisement

All about Branding

The Basics of Start-up marketing

The Basics of Targeted Marketing

1. How is Marketing for small businesses different from other types of marketing?
2. Best marketing tools for small business.
3. Online marketing for small business.
4. Conclusion

How is Marketing for small businesses different from other types of marketing?

Marketing of any kind involves attracting your potential customer base to purchase your products/services. There are various factors to be kept in mind such as marketing mix, analyzing your industry, analyzing your competitors, targeting, advertisement, etc.

These are important in cases of all large, medium, and small enterprises. However there are some crucial difference when it comes to actual marketing between small and medium, and large enterprises. These include:

• Type of capital and sources of funding. Larger enterprises usually involve some form of equity or shared funding, including large partnerships. However small enterprises often consist of a single main owner and assets belonging to the single owner. Therefore small enterprises face a limited budgeting issue when it comes to making investment decisions.

• Ownership and decision making. Major enterprises are usually owned by equity distribution or some form of large partnerships and are controlled by a board of directors. Small enterprises usually comprise of a single owner or a small partnership. Therefore while there is a comparative shortage of capital, they triumph at quick decision making and therefore have a higher flexibility when it comes to making decisions in response to the changes in the marketing/ industry trends.

• Area of operation. Small businesses have limited area of operation, therefore marketing strategies such as targeting and advertising become relatively easier and cheaper. There is also a vital role of word of mouth marketing when it comes to marketing for small enterprises. Goodwill is geographically limited, therefore it is important to maintain a modest social presence.

Best marketing tools for small business.

Here is our list of top picks for best online and offline marketing tools for small businesses. Click here for a more comprehensive list of marketing tools.

• Nielsen MyBestSegments. Neilsen MyBestSegments is a brilliant online marketing research tool for medium and small scale enterprises. You can analyse a local area’s consumption habits and demographic details, along with shift in consumption habits and trends. It is good for launching a targeted marketing campaign locally. It can also be helpful for competitor analysis to a great extent.

• USA GOV statistics . USA GOV statistics culminates data released by Federal Agencies on various topics such as agriculture, education, transportation, energy, etc. It can be used for geographical targeting and modifying marketing tactics as per industry needs. It is a good tool for local targeting as it conveys reliable official data.

• Business Cards. Investing in businesses cards is a must for small business. Small business need to establish connections. In case you meet people with potential growth opportunities and lucrative deals providing business cards is a cheap and professional way for conveying your presence in the market.

• Direct mailing. Maintaining a local mailing list can be a really effective tool when it comes to marketing for small businesses. It is important for small businesses to attract new customers, but it is way more important to maintain their established customer base. Therefore a mailing list for subscribers with mails regarding updates to the business and discounts/offers can go a long way in keeping your customer base satisfied. However spamming must be avoided as no one likes junk mail.

• Sales Promotions.  Sales promotions differ from advertisement in the sense that they do not promote the product itself, but include some extra benefits with the sale of the product. For example schemes like BOGO (buy one get one), discount on higher quantity of purchase, lucky draws with purchases, free shipping, etc.

• Engagement, Not Aggressive Selling. Aggressive Selling, focusing on immediate sales by advertisement rather than building up a customer base, usually only works to increase sales in the short term. It is a huge obstacle for a firm looking to acquire market share from an established market. Customer Engagement on the other hand is an essential. As is evident by the ever growing need of a good Customer Support, engagement and reliability on the organization from the customer’s side helps build the brand, occasionally faster than any other marketing method.

• Online Marketing.  Some small businesses are often cynical about the importance of online marketing given the differences audience scale at a local level. However given the state of marketing dynamics and a customer base driven primarily by online reassurance, it has become important for every kind of business to maintain an online presence. According to a study conducted by GE capital retail bank, 87% of customers who shop locally prefer to research their choices online before making a decision. This makes it essential for your brand to be visible online.

• Branding. Branding, even locally, goes a long way for business growth and development. Especially for a business dealing in generic or everyday use products, brand distinction and goodwill helps a lot in acquiring a competitively greater market share.

Online marketing for small business.

Online marketing is a modern day competitive necessity. Even for small businesses, it has become important to maintain a stable digital presence. With advertising services like Facebook’s local market listing, it has also become easier to target and advertise specifically to your ideal potential customer base.

Apart from online advertisement, there are two other major online marketing strategies: SEO and Social media.

Search Engine Optimization is a sequence of strategies and methods used to by a website so as to increase its search ranking. For example, an owner of a bakery in Seattle would optimize their website content to appear in searches for “Bakery in Seattle.” There are various methods and techniques of search engine optimization listed in our detailed article Search Engine Optimization.

Social Media is another excellent way to maintain an interactive customer base. Posting about current trends and connecting to your customer base online can help improve your business’s goodwill and even attract more customers. You can also use it for sales promotions or Pay Per Click (PPC) advertisement.

Conclusion

The most important points are to understand the dynamic of your local market, change and accustom to the needs of your audience as necessary, offer products of some customer value, and market to potential buyers only. Do not let the failure stories discourage you since entrepreneurship is all about facing and beating challenges. Once you understand what works for your market, marketing strategies become clearer. However in case of higher growth prospects and more complex market structures, professional assistance is recommended.

We Can Help!

Symphysis specializes in market structure and strategy. Every day we meet clients from around Greater Seattle for one-on-one training and consultation. Our marketing services extend to businesses of all sizes, family and enterprise. For more information, call or text @ +1 (425) 390-4738.

Further Reading-

Guide to creating and running marketing campaigns

Best marketing research tools 2019

Search Engine Optimization vs Search Engine Marketing

Best paid and free SEO tools

The four Ps of Marketing

Major types of Market

The Basics of Search Engine Optimization

The Importance of Backlinking in SEO in 2019

Industry Analysis

Various Types of Advertisement

All about Branding

The Basics of Start-up marketing

The Basics of Targeted Marketing

Contents

1. What is a Marketing Campaign?
2. The Marketing Checklist.
3. Where to run a marketing campaign.
4. Tips to ensure the campaign’s success.
5. Conclusion

What is a Marketing Campaign?

A marketing campaign is a sequence of promotional activities that a business undergoes to achieve a particular goal. Therefore it is different from marketing in the sense that while it implies all aspect of marketing, it is a goal-oriented and temporary strategy to boost your customer base, such as discounting, sales promotion, or an advertisement campaign. It can also be of various forms depending on the needs of the business.

Throughout the course of running a business, a brand may try out many general and specific marketing campaigns. Each one’s length and budget depends on the business’ current needs. Therefore certain temporary and long term variables need to be considered before launching a campaign.

The Marketing Checklist.

The following are certain perquisites to ensure a successful and profitable marketing campaign:

• Industry analysis

Industry analysis is the process of analyzing various aspects of an industry, such as where your business fits in into the market, its growth and profit potential, the state of competition, what marketing tactics are useful for the product line, etc. It is essential since it defines the potential liquidity, solvency, and profitability for you and your competitors in the industry. It focuses on analyzing market trends and therefore also helps your business prepare for any future shift in economic patterns of the market.

For detailed information on Industry Analysis click here.

• Competitor analysis

Competitor Analysis comes after Industry Analysis, which establishes which industry you will be competing under. But while Industry analysis is more generalized, competitor analysis focuses more on how the existing firms in the industry function, as well as any potential firms joining. It focuses on analyzing your competitors’ producing, distributing, and marketing strategies and narrowing down which ones would work best for you.

For detailed information on competitor analysis click here.

• Structuring

A strong structure is essential for good management and budgeting. Decide on what platforms you will be advertising through (social media networks, billboards, SEM, etc), what promotional methods you will be using (advertising or discounts or lucky draws or a combination of these and more), and for how long the campaign will run. In this step you also define the reasons for the campaigning, that is why are you running the campaign in the first place. For example, campaign goals could be clearing up excess stock or increasing traffic on your website.

This campaign duration can vary as well, such as it may be for a specific time period or until certain quantity of sales is made.

• Targeting

Targeting is the most important perquisite for any kind of marketing. It is advertising and promoting your product or service to a particular and predefined set of customers, who are the most likely to purchase the product. It ensures your promotional efforts reach only those who are most likely to buy the product, therefore generating more sales and increasing return on investment.

For more details and tips on targeting click here.

• Resourcing

Resourcing is calculating and defining how much your marketing budget is and where it will be spent. It’s an extension to structuring which emphasises on assignment, such as where your funds will be spent, who will be running each aspect of the campaign, how much time will each resource (monetary, human, or other) spend on the campaign, etc. It is important to assign human resources who are experienced in their particular fields to manage a large campaign.

• Budgeting

While budgeting is a common term, it is a game changer when it comes to marketing budget decisions. There are a lot of factors that go into budgeting for a campaign, like time period (structuring), demographic based distribution (targeting), where you will be advertising and to how (resourcing), etc. It is the process of assigning and defining the funds towards a particular variable of the campaign.

Where to run a marketing campaign.

Now that you have checked all the perquisites, comes the step where you have to decide where, how, and when you will be running the campaigns. This can be derived through industry and competitor analysis, based on what form of media distribution works for firms like yours.

A common approach to this is PESO (Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned) model. These are headings that include marketing strategies and channels where your campaign can be promoted. These include:

• Paid: Display and Billboards advertisement, Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing, paid influencers, Sponsorships, etc.

• Earned: PR and marketing, Media Coverage, etc.

• Shared: Word of mouth marketing, Social media presence, forums and referrals.

• Owned: Marketing on your own blogs and websites, your social channels, newsletters and email campaigning.

Click here for a detailed list of marketing tools.

Tips to ensure the campaign’s success

A company may choose any combination of the above depending on the campaign’s goals. However it is important to be dynamic and change according to the need of the environment. Some important management efficiency based factors come into play. These are-

• Use the campaign checklist. It is important to have a structured and laid out plan before starting.

• But also be dynamic and change accordingly. Business environment is ever changing. Some of the most successful campaigns have pivoted midway after looking at the initial analytics of a campaign. This change may be the method of marketing or content of your campaign, depending on whatever is most profitable for your business.

• Be quick in decision making. It goes without saying that quick and effective decision making is one of the most important building blocks of a marketing campaign. In the case particular marketing strategies are not working out, you should be vigilant enough to either change structures and redefine the campaign depending on the specifics of the campaign.

• Keep track of performance. Midway evaluation is also one of the important strategies. You should maintain a journal recording day to day, or even hour to hour performance of your business, defining variables such as what time does the campaign work best, what kind of people it is most likely to affect, how much you are spending for each aspect, etc.

Conclusion

A marketing campaign is a temporary project aimed at boosting business sales, however a successful campaign can help grow a business exponentially. That is why successful companies run a plethora of specific campaigns throughout the year. It often becomes important that all personal and professional efforts are put into its planning and execution.

We can help!

Symphysis believes in marketing from the ground up. With our team of dedicated experts we can help in locating your ideal market, segmentation, campaigning, search engine optimization, and create your own successful brand. For more information call or text @+1 (425) 390-4738 for a free initial consultation.   

Further Reading-

Best marketing research tools 2019

Search Engine Optimization vs Search Engine Marketing

Best paid and free SEO tools

The four Ps of Marketing

Major types of Market

The Basics of Search Engine Optimization

The Importance of Backlinking in SEO in 2019

Industry Analysis

Various Types of Advertisement

All about Branding

The Basics of Start-up marketing

The Basics of Targeted Marketing

Content:

1. Why marketing research is crucial for your business
2. Top ten best marketing tools in 2019
3. Conclusion

Why marketing research is crucial for your business

In our previous blog best free and paid SEO tools 2019 we listed our picks for best SEO tools in 2019. While SEO has become an integral part of marketing, marketing research still stands its own ground. Marketing is a much wider and dynamic concept than SEO. It involves researching not only to generate traffic and build an online audience, but also to keep up with industrial and competitive dynamics. It is also crucial in building your brand, as it is with marketing that most initial B2C (business-to-customer) interactions occur.

These marketing research tools will present better potential customer base data, so as to facilitate targeting and ensure efficient use of your marketing budget.

Top ten best marketing research tools and strategies in 2019

• American Fact Finder

American fact finder is a tool which can be used for general census collection as well as for targeting. Its filtering service allows you to sort out data by age, sex, race, location, etc. It provides the data about the following.

• American Community Survey   
• Annual Economic Surveys  
• Annual Surveys of Governments   
• Census of Governments   
• Decennial Census   
• Economic Census   
• Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Tabulation  
• Population Estimates Program 

Check out American Fact Finder here.

• Survey Monkey

One of the most popular and renowned marketing tools in our list, SurveyMonkey can be used to create and conduct online surveys. These can be generic or specific depending on your need. While they offer a free package as well, much better targeted and in-depth, and long term surveys can be conducted by subscribing to their premium packages.

Check out SurveyMonkey here.

• Survata

Survata is a paid form-building website with a twist. After you have finalized a survey form, their employees can (for a small fee) analyze the questions and provide feedback for targeting and industry/market relevance.

Check out Survata here.

• Make My Persona

Make My Persona is a creative targeting tool that generates a persona for your potential customer. They create semi-fictional profiles about your potential buyers using real market and industry data. It inputs your existing customers to provide an ‘ideal’ image of the potential buyer.

Check out Make My Persona here.

• Nielsen MyBestSegments

Neilsen MyBestSegments is a brilliant and creative tool for medium and small scale enterprises. You can analyze a local area’s consumption habits and demographic details, along with shift in consumption habits and trends as well. It is good for launching a targeted marketing campaign locally. It can also be helpful for competitor analysis to a great extent.

Check out Neilsen MyBestSegments here.

• Userlytics

Userlytics offers a beta testing platform to test any kind of media, from videos and banners to apps and websites. It records and shows beta users’ interactions- what they interact the most with and how long, including a screen recording feature for videos. Their pricing starts at $2900/year.

Check out Userlytics here.

• Pew Research Centre

Pew Research Centre is a comprehensive online marketing tool that provides data on various topics like marriage statistics, immigration statistics, social media usage, demographic distribution, device based ownership, etc. It provides all these tools for free with a user friendly interface and relevant charts for visualization.

Check out Pew Research Centre here.

• USA GOV Statistics

The official Government statistics website culminates data released by Federal Agencies on various topics such as agriculture, education, transportation, energy, etc. It can be used for geographical targeting and modifying marketing tactics as per industry needs.

Check out USA GOV Statistics here.

• In-person surveys and Focus groups

So far we have talked about online marketing strategies, however certain offline methods can be really useful for marketing research as well. While these tools showing data about customer behavior are useful, they may not represent the full extent of the data at times. Therefore, some businesses may prefer more personal research.

In-person surveys are one of the most popular of such methods. One can ask people from a locality to answer survey questions on streets or organize focus groups. A focus group is a great tactic to assemble a group of individuals to share their opinions and answer questions about certain topics like consumption habits, preferences, criteria for choosing one product over another, etc.

Conclusion

Proper research is essential for any successful marketing campaign. Therefore it is always advised to conduct and invest in proper researching beforehand. Once you have become accustomed to the industry, you can use these tools for a significantly improved campaign. However, it is recommended to get expert help for professional marketing.

We can help!

Symphysis believes in marketing from the ground up. With our team of dedicated experts we can help in locating your ideal market, segmentation, search engine optimization and create your own successful brand. Call or text @+1 (425) 390-4738 for a free initial consultation.   

Further Reading-

Search Engine Optimization vs Search Engine Marketing

Best paid and free SEO tools

The four Ps of Marketing

Major types of Market

The Basics of Search Engine Optimization

The Importance of Backlinking in SEO in 2019

Industry Analysis

Various Types of Advertisement

All about Branding

The Basics of Start-up marketing

The Basics of Targeted Marketing

Contents:

1. What is Search Engine Marketing?
2. Difference between Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO vs SEM).
3. Tips for an optimal Search Engine Marketing plan.
4. Conclusion
5. Footnotes

What is Search Engine Marketing?

In our previous blogs we have covered the basics of Search Engine Optimization and various SEO tools to help increase your Search Engine Result Page (SERP) ranking. However, SEO stands merely as a part of the greater Search Engine Marketing.

Search Engine Marketing aims to increase your search engine ranking by organic and paid methods. This is in hopes of increasing traffic to a specific website or web page, depending on the search result and/or the parts of the website advertised on the search engine.

Pay Per Click (PPC) is the most popular method of Search Engine Marketing. Under this, search engine marketing tactics like Google Ads target specific pre-selected search queries. For example, if you search ‘ipad’ on Google, the top results often have an ‘Ad’ tag along them. Those are websites targeting the search ‘ipad’ from Google Ads⁽¹⁾. Now, under PPC method, a part of the advertiser’s budget will be cut every time the link advertised is clicked, corresponding to that particular search query.

Difference between Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO vs SEM).

While SEO aims at increasing organic traffic by unpaid or indirectly paid methods and strategies (such as SEO tools⁽²⁾), Search Engine Marketing is mainly about researching, budgeting, and managing Search Ad campaigns which aims at driving paid traffic to your website. This difference between the nature of traffic (organic vs paid) stands as the main point of differentiation between the two. Some other differences are:

• SEM results offer certain paid extensions, such as contact number and direct links to other pages on the website, while SEO only shows a website’s homepage or a certain page as determined by the search keyword(s) and other SEO ranking Factors⁽³⁾.

• SEM results have an ‘Ad’ tag along them while SEO don’t. This is to ensure transparency and to differentiate organic SEO results from advertised ones.

• SEM strategies ensure immediate rankings, while SEO strategies are time consuming and long-term. SEO requires checking a long list of ranking factors before a particular site’s links are shown highly on the results page. However with SEM you can directly put your web page(s) at the top of a search result.

• SEM ensures a more specified and direct targeting. Tools such as Google Ads let you specify what kind of audience you want your SEM results to be shown to. These not only involve keywords, but also the audience’s personal data such as age bar, gender, interests, and location.

Tips for an successful Search Engine Marketing plan.

Search Engine Marketing campaigns require a comprehensive, well-researched, budgeted, and formulated plan to be successful and generate adequate traffic. Here are some of our tips for an optimal SEM campaign:

• Invest in Keyword Research. While you can target audience based on other factors (which would mostly be the predefined target audience for your products/services), the ultimate deciding factor for landing page is keywords. Tools such as answer the public can be really helpful with those. However if you are planning for an all-in comprehensive SEM campaign, we would suggest go for one of the ‘pro’ research sites such as wordtracker.
  
• Keep track. Maintaining a daily journal for traffic corresponding to each keyword campaign is a good start to know what works and what does not work for your business.

• Maintain a landing page with adequate design and simple UI. After landing a user on your page, the next step is keeping them there. This can be achieved by maintaining a well-designed landing page without leftover code, reducing load time, and designing an simple, user-friendly interface. Make sure to run all the necessary checks on those pages before putting them up for advertisement or you may waste your time and money.

• Implement Ad extensions for a user-friendly experience. Ad extensions show multiple clickable pages under one advertisement relating to a particular search. This is could be really convenient to the user as they could click directly on the desired page, generating traffic to that page directly. You can also list your contact info or a call out with extensions to increase conversions.

• Use tools and strategies to help improve the campaign. Going into a SEM campaign without proper research and SEM strategies is not likely to produce high results. Therefore we would recommend going through various SEO/SEM tools to help with campaign management and research so that you could make most out of your SEM plan. You can find a full list of best free and paid SEO/SEM tools here.

Conclusion

Search Engine Marketing strategies are of great importance since maintaining a dynamic online presence has become a competitive necessity these days. With such high competition, it can be really challenging to work through. However with proper planning, strategies, and guidance it can surely be achieved.

We Can help!

Search Engine Optimization and Marketing can be a tricky concept to understand and even trickier to tackle. Symphysis maximizes the number of times you appear in organic search queries. Our SEO team begins by reducing loading time, improving image quality, removing leftover template code, implementing analytics, all while improving keyword ranking. For more information and a free initial consultation, call or text @ +1 (425) 390-4738.

Footnotes

1. Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords) is Google’s advertisement system under which one can post clickable ads corresponding to certain key words. To go to Google Ads click here.
2. SEO tools help improve search rankings by offering various strategies and services to work on various ranking factors. To learn more about SEO click here.
3. Ranking factors determine which webpage will be shown first based on a search, these include backlinking, Keyword stuffing, loading time, etc.

Further Reading-

Best paid and free SEO tools

The four Ps of Marketing

Major types of Market

The Basics of Search Engine Optimization

The Importance of Backlinking in SEO in 2019

Industry Analysis

Various Types of Advertisement

All about Branding

The Basics of Start-up marketing

The Basics of Targeted Marketing

Content:

1. The basics and importance of Search Engine Optimization in 2019.
2. Best Free SEO tools worth your time in 2019.
3. Best Paid SEO tools worth the cost in 2019.
4. Conclusion

The basics and importance of Search Engine Optimization in 2019

Search Engine Optimization increases search rankings. When a user does a search on any online search engine like Google or Bing, search rankings dictate which website’s content will be shown first (relevant to the search keywords). Search Engine Optimization helps increase such ranking with methods such as backlinking and Keyword Optimization so that content from your website is placed before your competitors.

The importance of SEO can be determined in terms of discoverability and Goodwill. Given the cut-throat competition these days, it has become a necessity to stay current and competitive in every aspect of business to increase your brand’s goodwill and gain a competitive advantage over other businesses in the industry.

For more about types of SEO strategies (Black Hat vs White Hat and On-page vs Off-Page, SEO tips, and other fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization) click here

Best Free SEO tools worth your time in 2019

While paid options are often superior, for anyone starting out with Search Engine Optimization or working on a low budget, free SEO tools can be a very effective route for improving discoverability and increasing impressions. Here are our picks for the best Free SEO tools worth your time:

• Answer the Public.

One of the most popular SEO tools in 2019, Answer the Public is a great tool for commercial blogging and generating traffic towards your blog via keywords optimization. It can be described as a 100 times more efficient version of Google suggestions. It lists the most popular searches about a particular topic and is a great tool for blog keyword optimization.

Check it out here

• Moz Local Listing Score

Forget about international competition, small and medium businesses often require a locality-based search ranking check among its competitors. Moz Local Listing Score does so by checking your businesses’ search ranking in comparison to other businesses in a particular area. It searches sites like Foursquare, Facebook, and Google. It also shows actionable fixes for issues and problems regarding your listing.

Check it out here

• Google PageSpeed Insights

Google claims page loading speeds are one of the biggest factors in its search rankings. They have claimed to use mobile version of the website to determine its ranking, which is where the loading issue often occurs. This tool shows you loading issues with your website, along with suggesting remedies and measures to increase loading speeds.

Check it out here

• SEMrush (Free Plan)

SEMrush offers three main plans, Pro, Guru, and Business. However there is also a free alternative, which offers limited access to almost all of its services. While it is suggested to choose from one of the above plans for medium and large businesses, its free plan can be very helpful to small businesses as well.

Check it out here

• SEObility

While SEObility is a paid tool, it offers its services for limited use for free. It is mainly comprised of analysis services. These include SEO check, keyword check, Ranking check, and SEO compare.

Check it out here

• Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is an effective keywords analysis and management tool which can be used as an extension for Chrome and Firefox browsers that shows search volume, CPC, and competition on multiple websites for every keyword in the searchbox. Keywords Everywhere is also compatible with many other valuable sources such as Google Trends and Answer the Public.

Check it out here

• Google Search Console

One of the Google’s Webmaster Tools, Google Search Console tools and reports help you measure your site’s Search traffic and performance, fix issues, and make your site shine in Google Search results.

Check it out here

• Google Analytics

Probably the most popular free SEO analysis tool, Google analytics offers you the power to monitor every kind of traffic you can imagine on your website. It also offers feedback on which keywords visitors use to reach your web pages. It is done by a unique tracking code that Google provides to you, which can be used by pasting it into your webpages. Google can track visitor traffic and provide the metrics to you.

Check it out here

• Moz (Free SEO tools)

Moz offers over fifty SEO tools under Moz Free SEO services. These include backlinking and keyword recommendations. It is a great place to start Search Engine Optimization for beginners.

Check it out here

• Other Free SEO tools

Other than Moz’s range of free SEO tools, there are a number of other free SEO tools and sites online that offer great SEO support and boost. Some of our picks are Schema Creator, Keyword tool, XML sitemap generator, Alexa Rank checker, SEOquake, and Siteliner.

Best Paid SEO tools worth the cost in 2019.

While there are a lot of free SEO strategy options to choose from, those looking to focus on search engine rankings with a more serious and professional approach often prefer paid or ‘pro’ SEO tools. Here are our top picks from the paid SEO options that are worth the cost:

• Ahrefs

Ahrefs is great for analysing your competitors’ backlinks. It is the world’s second largest crawler, only succeeded by Google Crawler. It is a great platform to determine where to start linkbuilding by analysing your competitors and potentially gaining a competitive advantage over them.

Check it out here

• Raven Tools

Raven Tools works as a culmination of various SEO services, taking metrics from tools like Majestic SEO, SEMoz, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, and Google Adwords to provide a comprehensive search ranking result.

Raven Tools also offers over two dozen SEO services including link building, content/campaign management, competitors’ link analysis, etc. It is a great tool for those looking to start getting into professional Search Engine Optimization.

Check it out here.

• Wordtracker

As suggested by the name, Wordtracker is probably the best keyword research tools with data on over 250 million keywords in partnership with SEMrush. It has now included a ‘linkbuilder tool’ as well, which helps you find best backlinking prospects for you. It also shows competition data on how many pages are competing for each keyword and what it’s potential value is, giving a good push for competitor analysis as well.

Check it out here.

• SEO PowerSuite

SEO PowerSuite, like Moz, is a comprehensive SEO tool that has its services divided mainly into four branches, namely Rank Tracker, WebSite Auditor, LinkAssistant, and SEO SpyGlass. You have the option to either go for services individually or opt for an all-in-one plan as per your needs.

Rank Tracker supports over 300 search engines internationally. It shows website ranks from individual or grouped keywords and also suggests best keywords for optimization.

WebSite Auditor lets you run an audit on your whole website or individual pages as per your needs. It shows errors such as broken links, duplicate content, and missing HTML elements as well as suggesting methods to fix such issues.

LinkAssistant finds and suggests relevant and valuable link-building partners along with their contact info. It also lets to create and manage your own cloud linking directory.

SEO SpyGlass lets you spy on your competitors’ ranking and backlinking tactics. It shows their Google PageRank and Alexa Traffic Rank, along with their anchor and title keyword density.

Check it out here

• SEMrush Pro

We have discussed its free version, but SEMrush Pro packs various advantages over its free version. It is a great tool for systematic management and observation on search rankings, especially for analytics reports about your own website’s search data, traffic, and the same about your competitors’ websites as well. It also is a great tool for comparing keywords and domains.

Check it out here

• Buzzstream

Buzzstream’s primary purpose is Backlinking and Link-management. It is a great tool for CRM, Link building, and Social Media management. It lets you bookmark websites, search pages for contact info, collect metrics, track Twitter conversations, and overall help with online presence management.

Check it out here

• SEOmoz (MOZ Pro)

SEOmoz offers free service such as an Open Site Explorer to find backlinks. However, like most SEO tools it offers its premium services such as tracking ranks, analyzing social media activity, comparing backlinks among different URLS, testing a website for crawl errors, and performing keyword analysis under a pro package. It is one of the most respectable SEO tools due to its convenient and user-friendly design and effectiveness.

Check it out here

• Quicksprout Website analyser

Quicksprout connects to Google analytics and analyzes SEO data, social mentions, pagespeed and provides recommendations for improvement based on the inputs and results generated by it.

Check it out here

• Majestic SEO tool

Majestic SEO tool is a backlinking tool which lets you check a website’s citation flow, keywords, anchor text, and backlink history. It also lets you analyze you and your competitors’ backlinking background to building a better link-base.

Check it out here

• Other Paid SEO tools

There are a lot of other effective paid SEO strategies and tools which can be used according to your business’ needs. We recommend established SEO tools such as Whitespark (another comprehensive SEO toolkit) and Advanced Web ranking which can help you grow your search ranking.

Conclusion

Your SEO needs truly depend on your business’ needs and requirements, its unique variables, and SEO strategies required in the particular industry. While such tools can be really effective, professional help is often recommended if you are looking to gain a competitive advantage in the industry.

We Can help!

Search Engine Optimization can be a tricky concept to understand and even trickier to tackle. Symphysis maximizes the number of times you appear in organic search queries. Our SEO team begins by reducing loading time, improving image quality, removing leftover template code, implementing analytics, all while improving keyword ranking. For more information and a free initial consultation, call or text @ +1 (425) 390-4738.

Further Reading-

The four Ps of Marketing

Major types of Market

The Basics of Search Engine Optimization

The Importance of Backlinking in SEO in 2019

Industry Analysis

Various Types of Advertisement

All about Branding

The Basics of Start-up marketing

The Basics of Targeted Marketing

Contents

1. Marketing Mix: Definition and Importance
2. The Four P’s of Marketing
3. The Marketing Process (How to use Marketing Mix to your advantage)
4. Conclusion

Marketing Mix: Definition and Importance

Marketing Mix is a guide which can be used to form successful marketing strategies. It was developed to ensure an all-rounder approach before forming marketing tactics. The four Ps (Product, Price, Place, and Promotion) cover all functioning areas of a business, hence this tool helps businesses take a more comprehensive marketing approach.

It can be defined as the culmination of the major forces of market, namely product, price, place, and promotion. It helps achieve your marketing targets, as marketing mix functions as a monitoring variable to such goals by defining a table of progress, divided under relevant heads. For example, place mix can be used to monitor how far the reach of your product is physically, and how the expansion of the same is going.

The Four Ps of Marketing

• Product

Product is any good that a business offers for sale, or any services it is ready, willing, and qualified to provide under such circumstances deemed contractual by expression or conduct. In other words, Product is anything, real or psychological, that a business is ready to provide for monetary gain. As a marketing Mix, Product is an essential element as it is necessary to understand the product, and therefore its market conditions for any business to go about a successful marketing campaign.

• Price

Pricing decisions affects a lot of variables, from directly affecting profit margins and gains, to indirectly affecting growth, promotion, and everything up to the survival of the business. Under oligopoly market however, there is only minimum pricing liberty. Any price fluctuations and a business is bound to lose or gain customers immediately, at the price of lower sales or lower profits (respectively). Therefore a concrete understanding of the type of market along with knowledge about the industry and competition is essential before making pricing decisions.

• Place

Physical availability of the product is also very important. It is basically following the concept of being ‘at the right place, at the right time’. Ideally Place Mix should define where your potential customers are most like to wander into; this includes online shopping portals such as Amazon.

• Promotion

Through our previous articles we have always emphasised on the value of offering superior value as the key element of promotion. Promotion is basically a culmination of activities undertaken to acquire market share. Various methods such as advertisement, Public Relations, sales discounts, etc. are included under promotion. Promotion Mix looks to guide these activities, such that maximum ROI is obtained from the promotional efforts.

The Marketing Process (How to use Marketing Mix to your advantage)

To form an effective Marketing Mix that suits the requirements of your business and yields maximum results, we suggest taking the initiative for careful and constructive planning. This includes the process of industry analysis (click here), competitor analysis (click here), and advertisement analysis, as well as defining your marketing goals under the subheads of Marketing Mix and keeping a maintained checklist for the same. When implying Marketing Mix as a marketing basis, you should ask yourself the following questions:

1. What are the products I will be dealing in? (Product Mix)
2. What industry will I be working in? (Promotion/Product Mix)
3. Who are my competitors? (Product Mix)
4. What are competitors marketing strategies, and what strategies work best in my market? (Promotion Mix)
5. How will I offer superior value to the customer in order to gain market share? (Product/promotion Mix)
6. How will I make sure that my good are in stock according to demand?(Place Mix)
7. Where should my goods be distributed so that they have maximum potential customer reach? (Place Mix)
8. What will I charge for the products? How will it differ from others and what are the offers/discounts/possible loses that will be collateral to my pricing decisions? (Price Mix)

Upon answering the above questions, the best thing would be to lay down the respective goals in relevant headings and proceed with it.

Any market form is dynamic and ever changing, therefore a limitation of Marketing Mix is rigidity. You must be prepared for such changes, expected (in accordance to past changes in the industry) or unexpected.

Conclusion

While Marketing Mix is a comprehensive marketing tactic, it has some of its flaws that should be accounted for beforehand. It is a good approach for Start-up businesses (click here to learn more about start-up marketing). It should be used as a guide rather than as a rigid to-do list, describing your long term goals while dealing with variables as they come along.

We can help!

Symphysis believes in marketing from the ground up. With our team of dedicated experts we can help in locating your ideal market, segmentation, search engine optimization and create your own successful brand. For more information call or text @+1 (425) 390-4738 for a free initial consultation.   

Further Reading-

The four major types of Market

The Basics of Search Engine Optimization

The Importance of Backlinking in SEO in 2019

Industry Analysis

Various Types of Advertisement

All about Branding

The Basics of Start-up marketing

The Basics of Targeted Marketing