• FAQs

          Search engine optimization (SEO) helps businesses drive visits to their website through organic search traffic. Given that the top organic search results receive a third of the clicks, a decline in ranking could be detrimental for your business. Implementing SEO best practices on your website will help to ensure that your web content is seen by as many potential customers as possible. The more visitors you have, the better your chances are of converting those visits into sales!

          Local search engine optimization (SEO) helps local businesses gain visibility by optimizing their local business listings for local search. A business that leverages local SEO will include its address, phone number, local opening times, and exact location in the form of a local citation. The goal is to rank for local searches which are usually performed by people in a specific geographical region looking for a business near them.

          We typically see results within the first 30 to 60 days, but when it comes to SEO, there are many factors at play. It's important to remember that SEO is a long-term strategy and results may not come as fast at you wish.


        • FAQs

          Digital advertising uses the internet to send advertisements to customers who are online through different websites and social media platforms like Google, Bing, LinkedIn and Facebook.

          The price for Google Ads management depends on the monthly ad spend. For accounts with $1,000 in monthly ad spend, the price is $550/month. Between $1,000 and $5,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $950/month. For $5,000 to $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $2,000/month. For more than $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $4,500/month.

          The price for Social Media Ads management depends on the monthly ad spend. For accounts with $1,000 in monthly ad spend, the price is $550/month. Between $1,000 and $5,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $950/month. For $5,000 to $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $2,000/month. For more than $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $4,500/month.


        • FAQs

          This depends on the complexity and size of a redesign and if eCommerce is needed. On average, it takes around 14-18 weeks from the web design intensive stage to launch.

          If your website experiences the following issues: it’s not responsive on all devices, has a slow loading speed, the design appears old and tired, users don’t spend long on the site, sales are stagnant, or your business is going through a rebranding - your website needs a redesign to boost your brand awareness and sales.

          Sometimes there’s no need to rebuild a website. Minor edits, refreshing page content and images, or restructuring page layout for SEO best practices can boost traffic and sales.


        • FAQs

          Semantic search launched in 2013 with the release of Google's Hummingbird update. Since then, Google's search engine has become more complex. The integration of machine learning, with RankBrain, and NLP, with BERT, has enabled the search engine to better understand the context of a query and deliver more personalized and targeted results. Semantic SEO is the process of creating machine-readable content using structured data and linked open data to help search engines better understand your content.

          On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. On-page SEO refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized, as opposed to off-page SEO which refers to links and other external signals. From meta tags to page content, website structure, and HTML, on-page optimization services are focused on making your website more visible to search engines.

          Structured data refers to any organized data that conforms to a certain format, such as information in a relational database. When information is highly structured and predictable, search engines can more easily organize and display it in creative ways. Structured data involves using a piece of code that is laid out in a specific format easily understood by search engines. The search engines read the code and use it to display search results in a more dynamic way.


        • FAQs

          An SEO agency has experts in different areas of search engine optimization that may be out of the realm of your marketing team's abilities. SEO can be very complex and time-consuming. Furthermore, as search engine algorithms change it can be difficult to stay current on the latest ranking factors and strategies for improving online visibility. You will likely see a greater return on investment and better results from using a professional SEO agency than you would from tackling this on your own.

          As a digital marketing agency, SMA Marketing provides products and services in four areas: SEO, Local SEO, Digital Advertising, and Web Design

          We focus on building authentic, long-lasting relationships with our clients. We’re goal oriented and results driven and believe in doing good and making a difference in the world.

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How Targeted Marketing Maximizes Your Marketing Budget

There are many products on the market that seem like they are the perfect addition for any home or office. It can be frustrating for a company when they work hard to create promotional blog posts, videos, infographics, and eBooks that don’t attract the right leads. The truth is, if you’re marketing to everyone, you’re marketing to no one.

According to a 2020 survey from HubSpot completed by 3,400 marketers, 70% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing. Considering HubSpot’s 2019 study revealed marketers who prioritize their blogging efforts were thirteen times more likely to see a positive return on their investment, it makes sense that companies are allocating more dollars towards content marketing.

But with billions of websites to compete against, companies need to have a strategic approach to content creation. It’s important to have a content strategy that enables the best features of your products and services to stand out against your competitors and catch the eye of your ideal buyer.

What’s the best way to accomplish this daunting task? The short answer is with an authentic, honest, and analytics backed strategy that speaks directly to a well-defined buyer persona in a personalized way. Targeted marketing increases the opportunities for your digital assets to pull up in the right search queries.

First, we’ll define the term “targeted marketing.” Second, we’ll explore the best ways to narrow down how to segment marketing personas. And finally, we’ll explore the four types of target market segmentation.

What is Targeted Marketing?

Targeted marketing identifies an audience likely to buy services or products and promotes those services or products to that audience. Once these key groups are recognized, companies can develop marketing campaigns and specific product support for those target groups or segments.

To maximize targeted marketing, you need to narrow down who your ideal buyer is with as much detail as possible. This begins with contextual research.

Contextual Research

Narrowing down your target market begins by identifying your ideal buyer. A well-developed buyer persona includes details such as your potential customers’ pain points, their preferences, and some of the trends that may influence them.

The most recent research reveals that marketers create content to target multiple audience segments for a company’s products and services. Ultimately you will need to determine how many different audience segments to develop. Check out 19 Customer Segmentation Examples Your eCommerce Business Needs for a few ideas of different customer segments to consider.

The further you develop each persona, the more defined each segment becomes. With this information, you can ensure the content you develop is high quality as well as both helpful and educational.

When you know where your buyers prefer to consume their content, you will be able to create it for the medium they prefer. You can curate videos, blog articles, and infographics to help your potential and current customers solve pain points at different stages along their buyer’s journey.

Did you know more than 50% of consumers prefer video content over other forms of content such as emails, social media, and blogs? (source)

In addition to a well-developed buyer persona, you can accomplish context research for targeted marketing through keyword research. Keyword research includes more than branded words. Incorporating long-tail keywords, answers to commonly asked questions and your service location when applicable are all ideal opportunities for SEO.

The Four Types of Target Market Segmentation

Experts divide target marketing into four segments. Each division allows for content development to pull up in search queries for specific detailed personas.

The four types are:

  • Demographic segmentation
  • Geographic segmentation
  • Behavioral segmentation
  • Psychographic segmentation

Demographic Segmentation

This customer segmentation includes criteria like age, gender, single, married, income, education, religion, social class, race, and nationality. This is the most common segment because these variables are easy to identify and measure. Demographic segmentation can become more detailed when combining parameters such as income and social class or age and life-cycle.

Geographic Segmentation

Geographic segmentation divides consumers based on location. Segments can be broad such as dividing by nation or state. Segments can also be narrow such as county, city, or neighborhood.

Behavioral Segmentation

Behavioral segmentation incorporates things such as occasions, benefits, usage rate, and brand loyalty as consumers’ attitudes toward a product and how they use it are segmented.

Psychographic Segmentation

Psychographic segmentation is the most challenging segment to gather data on because it involves two variables people can keep more private if they prefer: lifestyle profiles and personality profiles. Psychographic segmentation considers details of consumers such as: Does my buyer persona live in the moment, or does he keep one eye on the future? Is my buyer persona more introverted or extraverted? How politically active is my ideal buyer, and how does this influence their buying decisions? What are her interests and hobbies?

One helpful way to uncover psychographic segmentation information is through social listening. Read more about this subject on our blog post, The Importance of Social Listening.

Targeted Messaging

According to Quoracreative, 2019, 23% of social media posts include a link to a blog post. Rather than simply posting a link, when you include a sentence or two explaining why you are posting the blog post along with an image, you will increase the chances to attract the attention of people scrolling through social.

Regardless, social media algorithms are one of the great mysteries on the internet. Social platforms have become masters of strategic wording. Take Instagram as an example:

Instagram posted this 5:23 PM – Jan 22, 2019

“What shows up first in your feed is determined by what posts and accounts you engage with the most, as well as other contributing factors such as the timeliness of posts, how often you use Instagram, how many people you follow, etc.

We have not made any recent changes to feed ranking, and we never hide posts from people you’re following ~ if you keep scrolling, you will see them all. Again, your feed is personalized to you and evolves over time based on how you use Instagram.”

Focusing on the words highlighted in yellow here are the questions I have for Instagram about their word choice:

  • What are the other contributing factors in the etc.?
  • If Instagram didn’t make recent changes, did they make changes at a date they consider far enough in the past not to be labeled recent?
  • Instagram states they don’t hide posts, but does that mean they omit them appearing? Because I see the same posts multiple times from some people and there are hundreds of people, I don’t see anything from until days after they post.
  • What is their process for determining how I use Instagram?

Rather than simply posting an image on Instagram and encouraging a reader to click the link in your profile to read the blog post connected to your image, you can use targeted marketing to connect with potential customers.

One way to increase the odds of connecting with your buyer persona on Instagram is to include the hashtags they’re most likely to follow within each post. If you’re targeting a local audience, you can narrow your audience even further by adding a location tag to the profile of the image.

This same strategy for targeted marketing works in a slightly different way on every social media platform and with your blog content as well as on YouTube. You can increase opportunities to connect by incorporating industry-relevant keywords your buyer persona is already using to search for companies like yours.

If your content strategy targets a local buyer, don’t forget to optimize for searchers who utilize the “near me” feature in Google. The best way to ensure you reach a local audience is to keep your Google My Business page optimized with accurate information.

For more information on optimizing for local search, check out our blog post Ultimate Guide to Optimizing Your Google My Business Listing.

In addition to social media, blog posts, and video marketing, it’s important to consider ways to leverage email marketing. HubSpot reports that in 2020, about 80% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement in the last 12 months.

Targeted marketing is an excellent way to increase your company’s opportunities to connect with the right people online and convert leads into buyers. By taking the time to develop detailed buyer personas, you can create content for different segmented audiences at different parts of their buyers’ journeys.

The more personalized your content is, the more your buyers will connect with you and your company. For more information on developing excellent content for your buyer persona download the Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing for Business Growth.

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