If you’re a company providing SAAS services in San Jose, CA, you’re always going to be looking for more subscribers. SAAS users can be extremely fickle and while it’s great when you find a steady client, you’re going to be dealing with a lot of customer churn. SAAS Digital marketing is the solution to help keep a steady stream of new users coming in!
Your digital marketing game needs to be top-notch but if you do it right, your company will benefit greatly.
3 Ways SAAS Providers in San JoseCan Improve Their Digital Marketing
1 – Understand that unique visitor stats aren’t that important
When doing digital marketing and content creation, it’s crucial to distinguish between your key performance indicators (KPIs) and everything else. Unique visitors per month is rarely a good KPI. It can give you a vague idea of how many people you’re reaching, but it’s much less important than A) visitor-to-lead conversion ratios, and B) lead-to-sale conversion ratios.
Keep in mind, you’re paying a little money for every visitor your website receives. Having a lower number of visitors, but high conversion ratios is going to be more cost-effective than having a lot of visitors but low conversion ratios.
2 – Tracking your users’ journey is crucial
How are visitors arriving at your site? Are they coming in via Google? PPC ads? Social media? Reddit? Knowing where your visitors come from helps you know where to best focus your marketing efforts. When you’re on a budget, it’s important to minimax for your most profitable lead sources or even be willing to walk away from sources that fail to provide enough leads.
Again, focus on leads rather than visitors. Leads are what get you new signups. Prioritize your messaging in outlets that generate the most leads and sales, even if they don’t necessarily send you the most visitors.
3 – Investigate the sources of churn
It’s inevitable that you’ll have churn among your customers – especially if you’re in a crowded market with competition. However, that doesn’t mean to turn a blind eye. It’s always worthwhile to investigate the causes of churn. Try sending out surveys to your customers, asking what features they’d like to see, or keep an eye on public forums discussing your product.
These sorts of actions are free but can bring a lot of insight into how to improve your product (or your pitch) to keep your customers happy. Usually, retaining existing customers is much more cost-effective than finding new ones.
Boost Your SAAS Digital Marketing in San Jose with HiveMind Studios!
Local SEO is a strategy every Search Engine Optimization Company should make a priority in 2019. Many San Jose startups shoot for the moon when it comes to SEO, and that can keep them from getting a good return from their marketing investment. I suggest having a narrower focus in the beginning with lead generation.
Everyone dreams about being on the first page of Google, and get frustrated when their efforts don’t pan out in the first year. Instead, try being on the first page of Google in San Jose. You don’t have to have clients in New York if you’re in San Jose, and it’s usually easier to get noticed in your local community than 3,000 miles away.
Local SEO is a bit trickier than standard SEO practices. It’s not just about keywords, as you will see. This article is jam-packed with strategies to get you started, so employ them one at a time and then add the tools at the bottom to complete your local SEO profile.
Sometimes all you need is to update your name, address, and phone # (NAP), or offer a giveaway for more customer reviews. Other times, it requires revamping your website’s copy and possibly your entire brand. Either way, local SEO is a process that takes time, so implement these strategies as you see fit.
Complete Your Google My Business Profile
Anytime I work with a company that wants to rank with local SEO, I recommend using Google My Business first. It’s free, easy to set up and easy to use. It also gives you the option of adding visual micro-content to your Google search results and running “ads” to your website for free.
After you complete your profile you can start posting. My suggestion is to post just as frequently as you would with your other social media channels. You can use this tool to create a mini-sales funnel without paying for anything. The best part is you do all of this on your phone.
The Insights tab is particularly helpful. With Google My Business, you’re one click away from knowing how many people interact with your posts and how many people call, click, and comment. Use these metrics to create personalized content for your audience.
Google My Business also gives you the ability to run Adwords and Analytics right from the dashboard of the platform. With Google’s push towards mobile-first, Google My Business is a great first step towards ranking locally and establishing the brand you want your customers to see when they search for your company.
Make Sure Your NAP is Consistent
A study conducted by Constant Contact, states that 49% of businesses never update their name, address, and phone number online. It’s really easy to do, yet it’s often overlooked.
Start by focusing on the major relevant databases in your industry and your social media. It’s easy to make mistakes like this, so keep a watchful eye on the first page of Google for what business directories are popping up for different relevant key terms.
The Importance of Online Reviews
Reviews are vital in Google’s eyes for local SEO. Google likes to promote credible websites and businesses that people like. For local businesses, the reviews that people leave are just as good as a high SERP.
Online reviews not only help with your Google ranking, but they help build your business’ credibility within your community. For businesses like restaurants, nightclubs, and physicians having 5 stars on Google and Yelp is essential for gaining more traffic.
I tell all my clients to view reviews as currency. In many cases, it’s worth it to give out free food, drinks, and kickbacks to get your happy customers to leave a detailed review. I know I’ve picked to call business solely on the reviews alone. The website didn’t mean a thing to me in comparison to the honest review someone I didn’t know decided to leave.
Tips for Marketing Your Content Locally
Local SEO requires content that is geo-focused. It’s not as simple as plugging location keywords in and hoping for the best. As stated above, you need to be included in local business listings and have other organizations in your area link to you, even if they are not in your particular industry. When it comes to local SEO, a backlink is a backlink, so our advice is to get them however you can.
Locally-oriented SEO content should obviously have the geo-focused keywords, but it should also have other locations and opportunities that are specific to San Jose.
Let’s say you have an email marketing app specifically designed for local fitness trainers. You can write a case study on one of your happy local customers and include their location and contact details within the document. By linking to them and having them link to you on their website, you create a loop of links that increases your local SEO reputation.
An easy strategy to get other organizations to link to you is to be active in the community and participate in events that improve your company’s ability to get noticed. Charity events, golf outings, and philanthropic dinners are great placed to associate your name with the community. You can create individual blogs for you website about each event and include the location, time, contact information for others to participate.
The event website should have a place to promote your business and provide at least one link back to your website. Having trouble finding a good event to participate? Try Eventbrite.com to find the right occasion in San Jose.
That being said this next section will help you get your keywords in check.
Add Geo-targeting Keywords
Sometimes all you need to do is add the city where your business is located to be a local SEO giant. This section has all the goodies on where to add your location-based SEO terms.
Start by looking for high-volume terms in the industry. Then compare that volume with the keyword + location. Here’s an example: Productivity Tool San Jose versus Productivity Tool.
Then add your locations to the header and footer of your website. This way it shows up on all the pages. Having your NAP on your contact page is great, but see if you can add it to other pages: About Page, Blog Posts, Service Pages, etc. The contact page is also a great place to embed a Google Map.
After your website is designed with local SEO in mind, then create content that contains the keywords plus the location you want to highlight.
Create Content For Local SEO
A website is nothing without loads of good content, and if you want to rank locally, you have to talk about local topics. Hubspot says: “When they published 11+ blog posts per month, they generated almost twice as many leads as companies that published 6 – 10 blog posts per month.”
Study Silicon Valley and link to local events, other businesses, clubs, charities, etc. Then call them up and tell them you linked to them. If you link to them, they should find a way to link back to you. If they don’t understand or can’t do it, you can even write something for their blog if need be.
Getting backlinks should be a major goal for your startup. Luckily, Silicon Valley is a very densely tech-filled community, so finding companies to partner and collaborate on marketing projects shouldn’t be a challenge.
A great way to think about creating content for local SEO is to tie in local news with your company. Your company should participate in the San Jose community, and that lends a hand to create unique content for your blog, direct mail, and lead magnets.
Another good idea is to put your local community’s name in the title of the articles.
Create A Locally-Oriented Page for Every Product Service and Location
Every page on your website is an opportunity to show Google where you want it to show up on SERP results. Some of your competitors will have everything they do on one page, and while that may look nice, it’s not as powerful as having all their services on individual pages.
This does two things:
Reinforces which terms you want to rank for.
Expands the amount terms your website is eligible to rank.
After you have a service page for everything you do, you should include them in the top menu. Use a drop-down box and link to each individual page.
Each page should have links going to it and corresponding blogs to ensure you are properly supporting each term.
Apply a Local Business Schema
A local business schema is a markup code, you can add to your website to let search engines know what type of business you are and what you do. It’s an easy way to improve local SEO, and by now many of your competitors are doing this, so it might be an essential ingredient to remain competitive.
You do have to some coding skills to do this, but if you don’t you can always try Schema App instead. It’s $30 per month for a single domain, but it sets everything up for you and allows you to monitor your schema using analytics.
If you’re looking to give coding your own local business schema, then check out this article by Brainchildstudios.com to get you started.
Another easy way to fix your local SEO is to make your website’s meta description point in the direction want it to go. Look at the example below to emulate good local SEO practice. Make sure description is short (under 155 characters), but has your location and the main keyword you intend to rank for. I usually try to get the keyword in there two times if possible and the location once.
A good SEO title has the city and state you’re in with 50 to 60 characters. However, depending upon how densely populated your city is you might want to consider niching your location down further. In Chicago, there are many neighborhoods that people will search for (e.g. Gold Coast, Downtown, and Bridgeport) to find what they’re seeking
Here’s an example of good a local SEO title tag and meta description…
If you’re struggling to cover all the bases with your Local SEO, invest in one of the Yoast SEO premium plugins. They tell you everything you need to know to rank your website based on your preferences.
Local Guest Blogging
Guest blogging for Forbes, Startup, and Entreprenuer.com is a great way to get your name out there, but it’s not that easy to get your work there as a beginner. Trying to get into the local San Jose blogs is a good place to start.
Most of the time, these blogs will not let you directly sell your business, but they will allow you to share your expertise. This is actually better than writing a blog/ad, because most of the people that go to tech blogs are not looking to buy anything. They want to learn. By sharing what you know, you make yourself an expert in their mind.
Think about this like being a guest speaker at an industry event that never goes away.
If you follow the guidelines in the article, you will greatly improve your local SEO strategy, but many of these steps will take time to get right. For those of you that have already implemented these strategies and are looking for a little extra data, try these tools to supercharge your local SEO efforts and simplify your process.
Screaming Frog
Wouldn’t you like to know how Google crawls your website, before it actually does? With Screaming Frog you can. It’s one of the most advanced SEO spiders and website crawlers available and will greatly help you raise your ranking and help you fix all the problems with your onsite SEO. It works with PC, Mac, and Linux and has free trial for a limited time. Click the link above to see if it’s right for your business.
SEM Rush
SEM Rush helps you find out almost everything about your website and your competitors website to be able to beat them at their own game. It’s an all-in-one tool that allows you to set up your website to your specifications so you get the results you want.
It’s sleek user-interface and the plethora of data you can aggregate makes this a must for any serious SEO practitioner.
Beyond the Keywords
Going beyond the keywords you choose for your brand is a big step towards creating the right local SEO image. Sometimes revamping your website is not enough for you to truly succeed. Your company image might be stale in your customer’s eyes. That’s when you probably need a complete rebrand.
If your company fails to stand out among a sea of San Jose and Bay Area competitors, you should seriously consider making a larger change than just trying to rank locally. What you need is to give your brand a new look, logo, life by making every page stand out with more than just persuasive copy.
You need might need a brand consultant to help you through a big change like this, so check out this brand auditor to see if you’re a candidate for a rebrand.
Nowadays you can boost your small business using a ton of tools, if you take advantage of them. New digital marketing trends and technology can help you increase your client base, generate leads and increase the visibility of your brand.
HiveMind Studios is one of San Jose, CA’s leading PPC management companies and they’ve collected some content marketing tips to help you boost your small business this coming year.
Following these 5 tactics, is an infographic (courtesy of SerpWatch) that may be just what you need to start the year.
1. Create More In-Depth Content to Boost Your Small Business
Short and sweet blog posts don’t go as far as they used to. These days, users are looking for more unique, in-depth pieces of content they can’t get anywhere else. Consider offering more premium content on your blog, such as longer, more expansive pieces that focus on unique topics (think 600 words or more).
2. Revisit Your Internal Linking Processes
Low-quality links won’t do much for your rankings in the coming year, so revisit your internal linking processes. In 2019, search engines will be looking for websites with up-to-date, accurate and high-quality links. Try going through your content with a fine-tooth comb and getting rid of any links to spam, dead or redundant links.
3. Invest in a PPC Management Company
One way to give your business a boost without waiting for long-term, organic content results is to invest in PPC services. Using a PPC Management company in San Jose CA (HiveMind Studios), you’ll be able to create targeted marketing campaigns that generate proven returns and results you can analyze. .
4. Inventory Your Content
Reviewing all of the content you have available can help identify areas of improvement or locate pieces of content that could be working harder. You can identify pieces of content that you want to optimize for geolocation, or unique blog pieces you forgot about.
5. Optimize for Mobile
Businesses can’t ignore the growing number of mobile users, especially when it comes to search engine rankings. That’s why it’s essential to ensure your website is properly designed for mobile and also ranks among voice search users. Mobile is one of the areas where businesses can connect at the local level, so optimize your content with geo-location data.
6. Optimize your storage and deliveries for online customers
Efficiency is at the core of our business. Anyone in supply chain management knows that maintaining a streamlined supply chain is imperative for the successful operation of any business. From the customer’s perspective, most of that success hinges on the last (and often, most tedious) leg of the supply chain: product distribution.
Unless you’re a retail behemoth like Amazon, operating your own pick and pack operation can be very costly and time consuming. Outsourcing to a warehouse eliminates the need for individual businesses to invest in or maintain their own warehouse space (and the workforce to manage it). With the help of an outside logistics specialist, you can focus on your core competencies without the additional stress of managing every moving part of your own supply chain. Using sophisticated inventory management software, a company like Commercial Warehousing can keep a constant eye on stock levels and guarantee prompt delivery to your customers.
Pick and pack logistics are especially advantageous for smaller companies. Large warehouses receive more comfortable shipping rates because of their high volume of orders. They also have their own customer service teams who specialize in shipping. So if you’re running a small business, a third party pick and pack service can allow you to offer the same level of service, security and shipping speed as a larger competitor.
Ultimately, pick and pack services help ensure that customers receive their orders intact and on time. And since how your product arrives can determine how much trust your customers place in your company, choosing a responsible, hardworking warehousing company can be one of the most important business decisions you make.
Digital Marketing Trends to Boost Your Small Business You Must Know
Whether you rely on SEO, social media, content marketing, PPC management, or email marketing to boost your small business and convert users into paying customers, the following infographic from SerpWatch is just what you need to start the year.
The marketing statistics depicted below could act as direct practical tips to hone your marketing campaigns, including deciding on the ideal length for your blog posts and emails or making your SEO tactics more effective. So what are you waiting for? Jump right in and start planning for an even more successful 2019!
We are your San Jose CA PPC management company and digital marketing experts
Do you want to use all of the tools at your disposal to grow your business in 2019? If so, HiveMind Studios can help you put together and execute an innovative digital marketing plan. Contact our team today to learn more about how your business can remain at the forefront.
This year business owners will have more tools than ever before to make a name for themselves locally. Platforms such as Google My Business and Youtube are providing businesses of every size with new local SEO marketing opportunities, so it’s important to keep up with emerging trends. HiveMind Studios is one of the SEO experts in San Jose, CA, and they’ve decided to share some of their insight about local search below.
For those who want to hit the ground running and increase their client base in 2019, here are some of the ways to boost your local SEO marketing reach.
1. Get Mobilized
There’s a huge segment of people searching for services on mobile phones, so it’s important to have the tools to take advantage of mobile users. Make sure your website is compatible with mobile platforms and appears professional and concise no matter on what size screen it’s viewed. Making sure your content is optimized for voice search is also important.
2. Optimize with Geo-Location Terms
One of the best ways to increase local search rankings is by optimizing your content with geo-location terms and keywords. The more specific you can be with your local keywords the better. Don’t hesitate to optimize content for particular neighborhoods, cities or even street names. You might also consider designing and optimizing specific landing pages for specific areas you want to target.
3. Get Involved
Many local SEO marketing specialists will tell you that there’s no better way to solidify your reputation and attract local attention than by getting involved at the community level. But what exactly does this mean? Even something as simple as offering your space for an evening to a local community group or hosting a weekend event or fundraiser can do wonders for your local presence.
4. Utilize Local Directories
One way to make sure residents in your area are coming across your goods and services is by taking advantage of local directories like CitySearch, which enables users to sift through various businesses based on location. Many people still rely on local directories to find businesses and services in their area, so be sure to include them in your local SEO marketing strategy for 2019.
5. Take Advantage of Video
Video platforms like Youtube can be used to attract attention at the local level. One inventive way to do this is to encourage customers to shoot a video describing what they like about your particular product or service. For example, if you own a boutique ice cream shop, offer customers a free half pint of their favorite flavor if they will shoot a video review for you.
Let us help you hone your local marketing strategy
Have you been inspired to revisit your marketing strategy for the coming year? HiveMind Studios can help you create a digital marketing plan that incorporates all of today’s leading tools. Contact our team of strategists today or visit us online to learn more about our company.
When you’re running a startup, things are tight. You have to stretch resources to make them last, cut corners to save money when you can, and always try to do more with less.
Thankfully, there are some tricks you can employ to get the biggest bang for your buck when it comes to content marketing.
Through content repurposing, you can take one existing piece of content and find multiple ways to turn it into something new. This process alleviates stress on your team, stretches your resources, and gives you more opportunities to connect with audiences while doing less work.
Here are a few examples of how you can repurpose content and get more results from your efforts.
#1) Combine existing content to create a new asset.
One of the easiest ways to repurpose content is to take existing assets and combine them to create a new, more thorough and in-depth asset. This process requires very little new content creation. You may just need to add an introduction and conclusion.
For example, you could take ten blog posts that touch on the same topic and turn them into a detailed ebook. Or, you could take a series of social media graphics and organize them into a blog post that talks about the theme of the images.
To plan for this type of content repurposing, be intentional about your editorial calendar. Organize the flow of your content ideas so they fit a theme. Scheduling similar posts in a row will make it easier for you to take the completed content and combine it to create something new.
#2) Disassemble existing content to create new assets.
You can assemble content pieces to create a new asset, and you can do the opposite. You can break apart larger content assets to turn them into multiple, smaller items.
If you have a multi-page sales guide, break out sections and turn them into blog content. Take pieces of a large infographic and turn them into individual images for each social media site. Or, even pull quotes out of a lengthy interview to create catchy social graphics.
Make sure that none of your content goes to waste by keeping a detailed content library that lists all of your assets. Then, when you are in a bind and need to create something fast, you will have a long list of options to choose from.
#3) Turn existing content into a new medium.
Breaking apart or combining assets aren’t the only ways you can turn existing content into something new and fresh. You can also alter the medium entirely. You can take content that was published as one content type and republish it as a new medium.
A lengthy video could be republished as a podcast, or it could be transcribed and published as a blog post. The blog post could then be turned into a slideshow presentation. From there, the content could be turned into a series of graphics that you use for social media marketing.
As you consider your content, try to image your work in a different format. Think about all of the different types of media that exist (copy, video, kiwi animations, graphics, audio, etc.), and visualize how you repurpose your existing content by changing its medium.
#4) Use one topic or idea as inspiration for multiple content assets.
It’s not just content that can be repurposed into something new. This process also works with ideas. You can take one powerful piece of research, a case study, or a new and innovative concept and use it in multiple ways.
If you publish a case study PDF, write a post that shares details from the case study on your blog. Also, publish guests posts on other sites that offer insights from your case study. Go on a podcast to discuss what you learned from the case study or produce an infographic sharing data from the case study and publish it on your site or other third-party sites.
When you come up with original, creative ideas or data, don’t limit their use to one piece of content. Get the most out of your innovative or fresh concept by creating multiple content assets that share your perspective or insights.
#5) Republish the same content in multiple places.
The last way to repurpose content may be the easiest of all because it doesn’t require you to create any new content. It only requires you to republish your existing content in other places around the web. Republishing content is a little like copying and pasting the exact same copy or media from one platform to another.
You could do this if you wrote a blog for your website and then syndicated it on other websites. Or, if you wrote a guest post and then also published it on your site, or published an article on Medium or LinkedIn and then also published it on your blog.
If you choose to repurpose content in this way, it’s extremely important to know rules about duplicate content. Search engines do not like to see the same content published on multiple websites. So, you must republish in a way that pleases search crawlers. If you republish content, add a rel=“canonical” tag on the republished post that points back to the original version. This tag tells search engines that the post is meant to be a duplicate, and it will help you avoid any search penalties that could be given out as punishment for stealing or swiping content from other sites.
Remember, always repurpose content with a purpose.
As with all digital marketing efforts, there should be a purpose behind each content campaign you create. This is especially true for startups who have limited resources. You do not want to exert time or energy creating content for no reason.
Each time you create something new or repurpose content, always make sure it fits into a bigger plan. Design your content so every new asset fits into your sales funnel and serves a purpose for attracting new readers, generating leads, or triggering conversions.
If you need help with developing ways to fit your new, existing, or repurposed content into your sales funnels, get our free ebook. The PDF guide explains how to use content marketing to design lead funnels that will keep your sales pipeline full of qualified, interested potential buyers and customers.
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