DISTRIKT is a marketing solutions agency specializing in digital marketing to help companies acquire new customers and achieve growth. DISTRIKT is a new member of the Localogy.com (The Local Search Association (LSA)) and were pleased to say a new contributor to the Marketing Bitz blog – bringing local indepenedent businesses vibrant and sustainable case studies and sales / ,marketing related content.
DISTRIKT believes marketing should drive growth, be measurable, and generate sales. DISTRIKT has the mission to maximize budgets to achieve growth, provide actionable insights fueled by data, and do right to clients and deliver results. Distrikt is dedicated to protecting and growing the brands they partner with.
Companies partner with DISTRIKT to improve:
Business performance – help the company acquire more customers
Media performance – data driven marketing to fuel successful campaigns
Team performance – education and training to share digital expertise
DISTRIKT Platform was built to drive leads and convert them into sales – it is an all in one marketing automation with email, social, analytics, landing pages, customer journeys, CRM data, and more.
DISTRIKT will be at Localogy 20/20 in San Antonio, March 16-18. Let us know if you’d like to meet them
Concurrently acquiring customers, making sales and driving traffic to your website is not impossible – with the help of SEO. With SEO’s prominence in digital advertising showing no signs of slowing down any time soon, it is crucial for companies to take advantage of every practice used to gain customers, and utilize it as an SEO tactic. One significant practice used to attract customers and make sales is the use of coupons. Utilizing coupons as an SEO tactic will drive traffic to your website, simultaneously increasing its page ranking on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page).
Coupons posted on external sources link back to your website, making them relevant backlinks for your SEO strategy. External sources that you choose to post your coupons on should depend on the industry you’re in and your target market. I have identified three external sources that you may want to utilize as coupon backlinks in your SEO strategy.
1. Coupon Websites
Coupon websites offer an accumulation of aggregated coupons for customers to browse through and select. You may choose to post coupons on third-party coupon sites in order to target customers that are looking for discounts. Instead of posting your coupons on as many third-party coupon sites as possible, it is important to thoroughly research and choose coupon sites that perfectly fit into your SEO strategy.
To avoid being considered spam, coupons should be posted only on relevant coupon sites, or in relevant categories within the coupon site. For example, a tour company could post coupons in the ‘travel’ or ‘tours’ categories within a coupon site. Additionally, coupons may also be localized. Coupons posted on Groupon could be advertised under ‘Local Deals’ in order to target customers in the location you offer your services in. Coupons could also be posted on niche coupon sites that primarily target your niche market. A tour company may post coupons on DestinationCoupons.com.
Major coupon sites like Groupon and RetailMeNot aggregate coupons based on upcoming holidays. You could take advantage of holidays in your local area such as Valentine’s Day, President’s Day or Independence Day by offering coupons for particular holidays. When posted on coupon sites, the coupon would show up in the directory for that particular holiday. Suppose a browser is skimming through deals, trying to look for coupons for ‘things to do’ on Independence Day. They may come across your coupon, and if it is attractive enough for them, use the offer. The coupon will redirect them to a landing page on your website where they will be able to finalize their purchase.
2. Partnerships
You may choose to partner with another relevant company in your niche to offer a coupon deal together. For example, a company for local tours could potentially partner with local restaurants in the area. The tour company could include the restaurant as a part of their tour itinerary and the restaurant could offer a discounted price for individuals on their tour. Developing a coupon together would enable both companies to benefit from the partnership and provide a relevant backlink to each other’s websites.
Search engines consider the relevance of the linking site and content, so backlinks from appropriate partnerships will be considered high quality backlinks from relevant sources. Additionally, a backlink that is not easily acquired is considered more valuable than a backlink that may be readily replicated by competitors. Relevant backlinks arising from unique partnerships in your niche will improve your website’s page ranking and drive traffic from partners’ websites, leading to potential conversions of your partners’ customers.
3. Influencers
Influencers are ubiquitous on all digital platforms from social media to YouTube. They also have huge fan followings with considerable influence over their followers’ purchasing decisions. A partnership with an influencer relevant to your niche, if utilized correctly, could be an external source that provides substantial traffic to your website. One way to acquire a backlink from an influencer’s page is by creating a unique coupon code to market to their followers. This partnership would benefit both parties: the influencer will be able to profit from every discount used by their followers or subscribers, and the company will acquire a relevant web 2.0 backlink to drive traffic and improve the ranking of their website.
Over time, is better to diversify the sources through which you get backlinks. This is because a new link from a website that has not linked to your website before is considered a high quality backlink. Therefore, the incessant search for new, relevant and qualified sources that could potentially be utilized for high quality backlinks should never end.
It’s a sad fact of being a restaurant owner: even if your food and service are excellent, and a first-time customer had a wonderful experience, it may still be a while before he or she comes through your doors again. After all, customers have choices. Lots of them.
It can be especially difficult for a restaurant owner to turn new customers into loyal ones if those people are new to the area. New residents often sample a variety of restaurants before choosing their favorite spots. That’s why it’s important to do more than offer incredible food and focus on creating a great first impression. Obviously, those things are important, but it’s vital to create a relationship with that customer.
To begin building what will hopefully be a long-term relationship, you often have to offer an incentive — special offers or some kind of deal.
So how do you do that? Incentivize those new customers.
Offer Discounts Based on Age
This is a classic; I’m not telling you anything that you haven’t heard before, so just consider it a friendly reminder. You might want to offer a “kids eat free” or “kids eat for half-off” type of deal. If parents know that every time they come to your place — even if it’s just on a particular day — they’re going to shave a bit off their bill, that may encourage them to visit more often instead of going elsewhere. Just make sure your discount is well promoted.
Promote Specials Based on the Day or Time of Day
Dynamic pricing at work. Bars have their happy hour, not just because it makes customers happy, but it makes bar owners happy to see customers coming in earlier, at a typically less-busy time. If you often see a lull on Monday nights, offer an awesome Monday-night special that your customers will have trouble refusing. Again, make sure this is well promoted, so customers coming on, say, Friday, will be reminded about what they can have when they come in on Mondays.
Market to People who just Moved into Town
Granted, this is my wheelhouse, since my company markets to new movers, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it. If you aim your marketing at residents who are new to the community, and you can get them in the door, it’s extremely important to offer them more deals so that they return. That might involve sending them home with an added incentive to return (half-off your next appetizer!) as they leave — or using a service that will send them a thank you note for coming paired with another special offer for when they return. The new movers are the people in your community who haven’t picked out any favorite restaurants yet. You could be their first.
Loyalty Programs
This is an obvious idea. But I bring it up because it would feel silly not to. If you haven’t developed a discount program for your most loyal customers yet, it’s definitely something to think about.
Theme Days
Your customers aren’t just people who like food. They’re dog lovers. They’re sports fans. They’re marathon runners. Maybe some of them are birdwatchers. Depending on your restaurant, you could have days where anyone dressed as a TV character or their favorite superhero gets a 25 percent discount. Or hold a singles night and see who shows up. Or — if you won’t be breaking health codes — invite your pet parents to bring their dogs.
Not every interest is going to be worth catering to, or practical, but if it’s conducive to your dining establishment, you could host book clubs in the off-hours, where people gather for a drink and appetizers.
The point is — your customers are more than just anonymous people receiving a delivery, sitting at a table or standing at a counter, ready to pick up their food. They have interests. They also have challenges, ranging from time-management to finances and everything in between. If you can remember that and cater to their personality or situation as much as you do their taste buds, you’re going to make a much stronger connection — the first step to building that oh-so-important relationship.
You may have to do that with some clever incentives, but getting your customers to come through the door (and keep them coming back!) is the ultimate goal. Because another fact of being a restaurant owner is that you need your customers more than they need you. That is, until the relationship is no longer one-sided. That’s the day when your hungry and time-starved customer realizes that he or she needs your restaurant’s help more than they thought.
Digital trends never sleep—and neither do your customers! That’s why it’s crucial to stay on top of the ever-changing digital advertising landscape, especially as you move into 2020. Customers expect a seamless, integrated experience from start to finish, beginning with your company’s advertising strategy.
Three big trends we’ve seen in 2019 are voice search, video advertising, and multi-channel marketing. Implementing these three tactics in your 2020 strategy is going to be a big way to win customers and make them brand advocates in the new year.
Here’s what you need to do.
1. Begin Optimizing Your Campaigns for Voice Search
Voice search is slowly but surely taking over. It seems as though everyone has a “Google,” “Alexa,” or a “Cortana” hanging out in their living room, ready to provide a weather report or play party music. While these tools are convenient for users, they may soon become one of the most effective ways to advertise to consumers.
To get a jump on voice search advertising, it’s time to start optimizing your marketing campaigns for voice search. We wrote a whole blog about it, with tips for how to optimize your ad campaigns, keywords, and other campaign logistics for voice.
Voice searches are more conversational than traditional search queries
Make sure you’re not excluding keywords like “near me,” “who,” “what,” “when,” or “where.”
A digital marketing technology with AI-capabilities will be a tremendous asset in optimizing your marketing campaigns
2. Lock Down a Solid Video Advertising Strategy
Video has long been one of the best ways to engage your customers. Studies have found that viewers retain 95% more of the information they see in a video than if they were to just read it as text. The average user would rather watch a video than read an article, and it’s estimated that mobile video consumption rises by 100% every year.
As such, if you’re not leveraging the power of video, you’re missing out on key connections with your audience in a powerful way. Look into your video advertising options for 2020, because these are just a handful of the benefits:
According to a 2014 study, YouTube videos have been shown to make an impact on buying decisions for targeted audiences
YouTube typically delivers a higher advertising ROI than traditional TV
Advertising on YouTube allows you to target your audience segments in a variety of unique ways
We wrote about video advertising in depth earlier this month. Check it out for some great tips on leveraging YouTube video advertising in 2020.
3. Integrate Your Advertising Across Multiple Channels
In 2020, it won’t be enough to dump your entire marketing budget into one channel. To have the best chance of reaching your customers and connecting with them in a meaningful way, you’ll need to integrate your advertising campaigns across multiple digital channels.
Multi-channel marketing involves taking a single advertising campaign and optimizing it across different advertising channels. Those channels may include a paid search ad, email, a print ad, a website, promotional events, a mobile app, or a video campaign
We did some research to see if there was a big difference between single-channel and multi-channel marketing. You can read more about that in a blog we wrote a few weeks back. Suffice it to say: in some cases, multi-channel marketing may result in up to 77% more impressions and 82% more clicks. It’s a strategy worth pursuing in 2020.
4. Stay on Top of Digital Marketing Trends in 2020
One of the best ways to make a big impression on your audience is by adopting the latest digital advertising trends. The Internet, and our digital best practices are only going to continue changing and evolving—making it imperative (and tricky) to keep up.
Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model where the product is available via the internet and the provider is responsible for the security, availability and performance of the service.
With cloud-based applications becoming more common, SaaS is also growing in popularity. Rather than traditionally buying a piece of software outright, it is much more common now to simply pay an annual or monthly subscription fee to use the software’s services.
“Software as a Service is similar to any service,” says Bill Dinan, president of Localogy. “I want something, I should be able to use it when I want it and turn it off when I don’t want it. And when I don’t want it, I shouldn’t have to pay for it. So, just about everyone in technology has moved to SaaS.”
Dinan says this shift is in response to venture capitalists wanting to create monthly recurring revenue for their tech companies.
Some examples of popular SaaS are Microsoft Office 365, Dropbox, Slack and QuickBooks.
SaaS should not be confused with the other forms of cloud services like Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). IaaS is where virtualized computing resources are provided to an organization via the internet, such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform.
PaaS is where a service provider offers a platform to clients where they can develop, run and manage business applications without having to build the infrastructure. PaaS providers include Microsoft, Google and IBM.
Benefits of using SaaS
As more companies have offered cloud services, it, in turn, has reduced the cost for companies to develop software tools that people like professional landscapers can use.
“You’re adding these things that can provide more time and optimization,” Dinan says. “You can pick them up for $5 a month or $9.99 a month; they’re not big investments anymore.”
Dinan says one of the main benefits of SaaS is the fact that by paying monthly, you can try out a product and if it’s too complicated, doesn’t provide the desired results or isn’t used, you can simply turn it off.
“If you’re not getting that feeling that the technology company is a partner with you on your business journey, then you should cancel it and look for another one,” Dinan says. “The small business owner should not have to invest hours and hours of time trying to figure something out. They should be able to get it and it should be intuitive.”
The other major benefit of SaaS is it often frees landscapers up, giving them more time to work on their business instead of in it, automating tasks and streamlining administrative duties.
“The little things that you could do with that one hour a day far outweigh the costs of SaaS technology,” Dinan says. “It’s worth the investment to get that hour back a day.”
Choosing useful SaaS for your business
When it comes to choosing the right SaaS technology to invest in, Dinan says landscapers should ask what are the problems they’re dealing with and what can the service solve?
Most SaaS serve as a way to save time. Another thing they can help with is collecting payments, thanks to the ability to embed credit card payment technology.
“So now when you go to send your invoice if you using one of these systems today, you’re sending out your email out, boom, there’s a link, click here, payment done, finished,” Dinan says. “You’re not dropping the envelope at the front door with the invoice in there hoping the guy pays.”
Dinan says the only bad types of SaaS are the ones you are paying for and don’t use.
“If you’re not using it in 30 days, cancel it,” he says. “Because if you can’t make it a habit, if the company is not helping you make it a habit, that’s when you move on.”
As for if you should be looking for an all-in-one service or specialized SaaS, Dinan says that while over 70 percent of local businesses say they would like an all-in-one solution, it’s better to find about three companies that can cover most of what you need.
Typically, most technology companies will specialize in certain aspects of a business but will partner with other services that may handle other elements, such as the marketing side of things, rather than trying to do their own version of it.
