Digital Marketing’s Role in Business Growth

When COVID-19 began spreading across Wuhan, China, I vividly recall finding out about it just as we happened to be shopping for groceries at a local area Costco.

I told my wife that something about this felt different to me from previous outbreaks, and I expressed my concern to her that somehow this was also going to be handled very differently than previous outbreaks would. This time, I worried aloud, I felt it could become politicized rather than acted upon from a purely scientific perspective, logically. It would run through the US and people wouldn’t know whether to believe it was real or a figment of their imaginations as fatalities would skyrocket.

I suggested we do our best to stock up on food staples and sanitizers, just in case. Once we got home, I started researching what was going on across the globe more extensively and especially locally.

As far as from a digital marketer’s perspective, most local businesses I discovered didn’t have functional websites (that would work on modern phones or tablets), most had (and still have) either incorrect SEO or none at all so couldn’t be found in local Google search results.

What Is SEO and How Do I Use It

Most local businesses didn’t use eCommerce to accept payments for services or goods, and few, if any grocery stores at that time offered home delivery in any way. Not a single local pub offered online payment, online menus, not a local retailer had any kind of online shopping.

Here’s an infographic I made to visually explain eCommerce.

Even our local Walmart and Whole Foods wouldn’t deliver when COVID began. Suffice it to say 99% of local restaurants and stores certainly didn’t offer curb side pick up or home delivery at that time and I knew few if any stores in our little local downtown area were even online, much less prepared to swiftly pivot. If they survived this, it’d be quite surprising.

Several clients asked about adding eCommerce to their websites to offer pricing packages so they could take payments online, several asked about using e-signatures for contracts and invoicing, several asked how to safely set up branded video conferencing, others wanted to start automating email and contract bidding processes more, others wanted help setting up online appointment scheduling for services and video conferencing.

But I felt worried for those smaller businesses that either would not or could not make that transition fast enough for whatever their reasons. Since that time, as I’ve spoken on business-centric podcasts and events, I’ve taken every opportunity possible to opine the benefits of using digital marketing in a serious, committed way to specifically help struggling businesses make this transition.

How Digital Marketing Can Work to Reboot Failing Businesses

Digital marketing isn’t a miracle cure for surviving a global pandemic any more than imbibing a glass of bleach would help an infected person recover from COVID-19, but it can level the proverbial playing field so that chances for surviving, even thriving, increase as so many others’ decrease. Let’s start with the first, most foundational way in which digital marketing starts bridging divides.

1. Go Mobile

According to the statistical aggregate site, Internet Live Stats, there are over four billion internet users across the globe, approximately five billion Google searches per day, and well over two billion active Facebook users, with approximately three million smartphones sold daily. Those numbers are increasing daily.

And according to Statistia, another statistical analysis site, over 83% of the US population uses their smartphones to access the internet. This means quite simply that presuming you care enough about your business to have a modern functional website, it’s more likely to be accessed by smartphone browsing than by computer or tablet use; so if it doesn’t work quickly and easily on an iPhone or an Android phone, you’re likely to lose that particular potential customer. They can go to Amazon or eBay within 2 to 3 seconds if not sooner. So the first and most important “quick win” for rebooting business in a post COVID-19 economy is to be online and make sure your business presence is represented well on mobile. That means using responsive design (which means your website literally “responds” to the shape and size of the device being used – so your website looks and “responds” the same way no matter what device is being used to visit it), making sure your site loads quickly (because Google will penalize websites that do not), is easy to navigate (which has much to do with what we call User Experience, how users experience and navigate your website).

2. Local SEO

When I was studying political campaign messaging (which is the way political campaigns are “framed” and ideas are communicated to the voting public), there was a saying that “all politics is local,” coined by the late Speaker of the House “Tip” O’Neal. What O’Neal meant was that voters wanted to know how decisions and messaging affected them where they lived, figuratively and quite literally as well. Taken one step further, it’s natural and logical to say that businesses start and certainly grow (or don’t grow) locally as well.

When it comes to using Search Engine Optimization (how you outrank competitors in online search), Google rules the roost, and if your site isn’t showing up in the first page of Google search results it’s likely invisible to those whom you want to see your business the most.

Reaching the Top of Google

In most cases you get your company website to show up in that vaunted first page of Google search results through a number of approaches. The first way to access that lead over competitors is to use hyper-local or local SEO and integrate that into your website and do so in coordination with Google My Business and Google Maps, Google Reviews, and other lesser known online directories. It’s seeding the digital ground so your site can be found by more people, more often, more locally, faster. The more seeds you plant, the greater the likelihood some of those seeds will grow. The sooner you start planting those seeds, the faster they’ll grow, and certainly faster than inactive or apathetic or stunned competitors too large or stuck in their ways to change course.

3. Taking Local SEO Further

Now, if your mobile-friendly, SEO-optimized modern site is now registered correctly with Google My Business, Google Maps, Google Reviews, let’s put more beef into that presence by requiring that you use the same local SEO to also list that same site with local directories such as Yelp, Yellow Pages online, every other online directory we can find along with local area Chambers of Commerce and Better Business Bureaus. In most cases a local BBB doesn’t even charge to list a business while some Chambers may.

But if you’re a local business ready to grow and reach more people, it’s investment capital well spent to not only find more ways to connect to locals, but to also concurrently increase online authority, reputation, visibility, while improving perception of professionalism while giving your site historical and authoritative back-links and places to also cross-post future content to engage even more viewers (and offer special deals to or submit commercials to).

We also should want to take our newfound local SEO and resulting presence and further build on that foundation by investing minimally into Facebook ads and perhaps Google Ads or LinkedIn ads (which are most expensive but also much more targeted specifically to professionals) to promote our local SEO terms, keywords, and business to Facebook and Google network users (which are sites such as YouTube and many, many affiliate companies) to further increase and build local exposure. Again, this is work that is foundational in that it builds authority online and credibility over time but can definitely increase conversions and overall general exposure online. Any business that can invest in giant billboards and arbitrary bus signs can certainly invest a quarter of that revenue into digital (which offers greater Returns On Investment over time and can increase reach exponentially), especially in larger urban areas where more people are “plugged in” and active online or growing.

4. Use eCommerce

Every business needs money, uses money to pay bills, and accepts monetary transactions from their clients or customers; and yet the number of businesses online and actively using eCommerce to accept those funds online are practically nil.

Well, actually, there are somewhere between 12 to 24 million eCommerce sites across the globe as of mid-August 2020.

That’s not alot when you consider there are well over 1 billion websites in the world.

Yet in 2024, 95% of all retail transactions were projected to be done online. That deficit is a huge disconnect between big box retailers and multi-million dollar corporate holdings and the struggling small business owner who may still see digital marketing as a fad or something junior practices in mommy’s basement to play online scrabble or something. It leaves most small-to-medium business owners (SMBs) in the dust, and choking on the dust left by larger competitors.

Again, you see a trend developing here where the businesses that needs to be taking advantage of potential game-changing technologies either won’t do it or can’t do it or are still scratching their heads wondering whether or not they should be online or try to find some way to hack their “free” DIY template.

It’s a common misconception that eCommerce is solely used to sell physical items; when it can (and is) used just as well for taking payments for everything from services to downloads, from taking payments for consultative appointments, to yoga classes, to room reservations to selling tickets to events or travel arrangements, to taking payments for hotel reservations to providing online counseling sessions or accounting seminars or courses, cooking classes, shipping custom recipe food items for delivery or curb-side pick-up or using drop-shipping to sell any type of item known to mankind or selling access to private meetings of whatever kind to selling movie tickets, theater performances, paying for car service, pre-paying bills, ordering groceries, paying insurance premiums or co-pays, you name it.

Just as Walmart takes payments for groceries delivered to your door or for pick-up, they also take payments for audio books, movies, pharmacy prescriptions, automotive repairs, while Amazon takes payments now as a gateway for service providers, selling groceries, downloads, physical books and other items.

You’re only limited by how easy you want to make it for your customers and clients to pay you. Make it easy and easier to pay you – since we all use money every day. Whatever you do or are thinking of one day doing, there is a way to use eCommerce to accept payments for it. Remove any potential obstacles from your customers working with you and paying you….especially during a global pandemic. Nobody should have to drive for an hour or worry about their health in order to pay a bill when it’s perfectly feasible and technically “do-able” to empower them to make payments for anything and everything online faster and easier.

5. Content Marketing / Blogging

Blogging isn’t just writing about your personal intimations whenever you feel inspired to do it. It can be that, certainly, but blogging doesn’t have to be (nor should it be) limited solely to that. It should also be used to create what is called in content marketing terms “evergreen” or “cornerstone” content.

Three Silos of Marketing Content

Now producing this type of content is more time-consuming absolutely, but is worth the time-investment as it provides your company with marketing collateral in the form of intelligent, articulate, hopefully (at least moderately) entertaining content that informs your customers or clients in key matters.

For lawyers blog content could focus on how to prepare for a court appearance, prepare for a contentious divorce, or handle wills. For a dentist it could be content addressing important precautions they’ve taken to protect patients from contracting COVID-19 while vulnerable. For an accountant it could be addressing retirement concerns or market fluctuations.

For health care providers it could be threats to the Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as “Obamacare”) and what to do if it’s taken away from the 20+ million people depending upon it for coverage.

For a government agency, it could be content introducing their services, types of services, common consumer questions or issues, local affairs, workshops, online presentations, downloadable forms, areas to pay bills (with related content explaining each option or the benefits of each service), room rentals, policy updates, staff biographies, and maybe even a calendar of events or ways consumers can help the community.

For a restaurant ideal content could be blog post recipes with detailed instructions, blog posts discussing healthy eating trends and ingredients, proper sanitation procedures, how they work with local suppliers and vendors, how you can place orders for pick up or delivery online safely, the history of the restaurant, cooking trends, their favorite cooking shows, cooking show reviews, best utensils, local cooking events, cooking videos, ingredient videos, and so on.

For a salon blog posts could cover hair loss and hair care topics, safe types of lotions to use, shaving techniques for men, what to do for ingrown hairs, how to treat toenail fungus at home (if the salon does pedicures and manicures), how to book appointments online in advance, how to safely pay online 24/7, new COVID safety protocols to follow and why, their licensing information, history of the business, information on the owners and their personal touch, what makes them stand out from others, tools of the trade, and so forth.

The point is to take the time to create in-depth, detailed content that addresses concerns of your ideal customers and preferably have enough to content to begin promoting your business online for a few months. From an SEO perspective it’s probably better to have this content already written before a site goes live, but sooner is better than never.

6. Content Repurposing

Content repurposing is taking these valuable blog posts now and repackaging them in other formats. Why bother? Well, the reality is that different people and different types of people enjoy consuming content in different formats to suit their own preferences and situations. People who do a great deal of driving or enjoy exercising regularly may prefer listening to content as podcasts.

Some people prefer to take their time and read content, while others prefer the more immersive experience of watching a video. Others may want to dig deeper and take a course on a particular topic or sub-topic, while still others may be highly visual and enjoy seeing infographic representations of concepts.

Content repurposing is the practice of taking articulate blog posts and simply repurposing or repackaging that content into other forms so others can read, view, watch, or listen to it as they see fit, when it’s most convenient for them. This concurrently lets you reach more people with the (essentially) same message repeatedly, while providing more content for you to submit to Google and social media outlets repeatedly over time.

It also gives you more to promote through advertisements (both paid – known also as PPC for short) or through posting this content in various formats socially online. To take that one further step, if we make sure that each form of repurposing has slightly different SEO terms and descriptions, we’re doubling up on our SEO presence in terms of what Google can index online. If we then incorporate local SEO terms, that again, further solidifies our local positioning. The more niche our market (such as small local book stores, barbershops, or super-specific types of service providers) and the lesser the competition online, the greater the likelihood for dominating that local SEO presence. When we have great content, in multiple formats, that we promote online and advertise as PPC, we’re beginning to use our company websites as much more than a static “one off” and more like the marketing machine it was always meant to be – especially if we act on the previous steps of 1-5 we’ve already mentioned.

7. Give It or Sell It

Let’s now take the cream of the crop that you’ve created, the best content from this work, and all the ways that content has been repurposed as we mentioned before, and use it to create free mini-courses, as central parts of larger courses, free ebooks, downloadable forms and checklists, white paper reports, blog post series, video series, and paid courses. This now provides you with content you can actively use for presentations, webinars, speaking engagements, podcast interviews, video interviews, promotional opportunities, and, of course, even more content for you to promote on your company website, then through social media marketing, then through paid advertising, and then set on automated rotation so it’s all sent out again to new readers every 30-90 days in cycles.

Every once in a while you can update hashtags, update content, add more, include courses, interviews, and integrate with paid ads and even random Facebook posts. Answering questions on forum sites such as Quora also provides ways to create even more content or inspiration for blog posts, ebooks, courses, videos, podcast episodes, and so forth.

8. Let the Circle Be Unbroken

Taking this cycle full circle to its natural conclusion is now using all of this new content, going through the “portal” of the company website, we should next begin planning ways to utilize these new assets and approaches to create pre-recorded or live events (or even hybrid events that levy some pre-recorded elements in coordination with live introductions and afterwards as many do in YouTube webinars and online sales events) through sites such as EventBrite, Meetup, Facebook Live events, pointing watchers and participants, again, back to the company website or special offer on a site “offer” landing page (which is simply a page of a site set aside for the purpose of offering a limited-time offer or sales offer of some kind or coupon deal).

Summation

When we create a modern mobile-responsive company website that works on all devices, that features and takes advantage of hyper-local (or just generally local) SEO, that is listed in local directories (as well as global local directories such as Yelp and Google My Business, Google Maps, and Google Reviews as well as the others I mentioned), that coordinates these listings and terms with Google Ads and Facebook ads (at least), that demonstrates easy-to-use eCommerce for accepting payments efficiently to the fullest extent possible, that provides content that speaks to the pain points / needs your ideal consumers face, that repurposes content and subsequently uses that repurposed content as well with PPC ads and social media distribution, that creates courses and other collateral from that, uses that for other types of live and pre-recorded events, and can get into the proverbial groove of doing this on a regularly-recurring basis, you’re well on your way to putting digital marketing to work for your business to a much more robust extent than most small business owners can even conceive.

If we automate processes such as email responses and contract bids and RFP responses, provide an interactive map if you have a physical brick-and-mortar location, posting COVID-19 policies to ensure customer safety (or at least speak to it), keep your reviews and listings updated, fine-tune as you do, add fresh content that speaks to the needs of your idea consumers on a regularly-recurring basis, and do everything else listed above to the best of your ability with experienced, professional help, you’re going to see marked improvement (which not coincidentally provides even more content to create, distribute, repackage and subsequently redistribute). Let the wheel turn and it will take you forward with it.

The Podcast Episode

You can listen to some of my additional thoughts on this topic on an episode of my podcast “The David Somerfleck Podcast.”