An entrepreneur has just hung his shingle up and opened up for business as an independent public relations consultant. Specializing in handling public relations for niche athletes, the proprietor anticipates a low amount of competition in his home area of southern California. After all, most PR professionals tend to work for agencies, which tend to go after bigger accounts.
The business owner sets up a marketing plan. He’s not the most well-versed in marketing, but he feels he knows his way around enough to be able to handle the initial startup himself.
He spends time posting on his social media, writing content for his website and networking with other professionals in order to gain traction and generate viable business leads.
But try as he might, none of his marketing efforts seem to move the needle when it comes to acquiring new customers.
Indeed, the customer acquisition process can be challenging. Particularly when first getting started, it’s important to lay the proper foundational groundwork for a successful business. Even in the face of low perceived competition, it’s best to set out strong and achieve high rank and rating in online searches.
For this reason, a business’ Google ranking and use of ads are important and a worthwhile investment of time and resources for any business.
One way this public relations professional could have amplified his brand was to work on optimizing his web content for search engine optimization (SEO). This process is often skipped due to lack of education about the benefits of proper SEO, so in the face of a lack of knowledge, it may be best to contract out the work to an SEO expert.
Additionally, a good foundation and maintenance of SEO can help increase the brand’s ranking on Google. 75 percent of users searching on Google will not click past the first page of results pulled from search terms. This means that a business that does not have sufficient ranking will likely not be able to organically grow and acquire more customers.
Another way to boost the brand’s overall quality of web content and subsequent ranking is to enlist the services of Google Ads. Again, this process can be overwhelming for some, and that’s okay! It’s perfectly acceptable to recruit someone more experienced in SEO and Google Ads to help optimize a business’ online presence. In fact, this is a worthwhile expense in many cases.
Particularly when combined with a strong effort to grow a business’ online presence organically, the use of promotion and advertising through Google has a profound effect on ranking. In addition, an ad can be used to help a business appear on the first page of search results, in the ad section, while the organic traffic is increased in the background. This way, the brand does not miss out on potential leads or customer acquisition due to a lack of presence on the first page.
Google Ads are also beneficial because of the amount of data available that gives insights into what parts of a campaign are working, what potential customers are searching for, and what sort of return on investment the brand is seeing if any. These insights are useful for future strategic moves and adjustments.
A business must rank well and with quality on search engines in order to truly gain traction with customers. When the fresh-faced public relations consultant takes a step back and does a true audit of his online presence, he may find several opportunities to boost his rank and therefore put himself on the right track to establish a strong business.