5 Reasons to Hire a Digital Strategy Consultant For Your Business

 

In the past, businesses have been able to take their time for planning and preparation. However, this is no longer the case due to the competitive digital landscape we now find ourselves in. Business owners now need to come up with several strategies, and implementations within a short span of time such as weeks or days. So it is highly imperative for businesses to keep themselves ahead in this accelerated pace. The best way to stay ahead of the competition is to have a carefully drafted digital strategy. A result-driven approach serves as the basis of any digital strategy and can be extremely beneficial for your company.

So, having a comprehensive digital strategy is essential for any business. The best way to develop this is by working with an expert digital strategy consultant who can help you identify your goals and create a plan to achieve them. But for that, you need to identify what do you expect from your business? By expectations, we refer to the goals you have in your mind relating to your brand. In most cases, the primary objective for businesses is becoming profitable and achieving long-term growth. If this is the case, then defining your digital strategy is the most crucial aspect for attaining both goals. 

Apart from this, there are several other attributes that can be attainable if you choose a digital strategy consultant for your business. A right strategist can help you to

1. Stay Updated and Relevant

In order to stay ahead of the curve and maintain a top spot in your industry, you'll need to offer a unique product or service that can't be found elsewhere. However, that's not the only thing you'll have to do to stay ahead of the competition. You'll also need to make sure your website is up to par and utilizing the best SEO practices. And finally, you should consider hiring a consultant. A consultant will guide you with digital changes as they happen, helping you implement new technologies, and keeping you abreast of any new market developments so that you can incorporate them into your business direction.

2. Increase Efficiency and Margins

As a small business owner, you’re no doubt working hard to bring in new customers, keep existing customers happy, and make sure the bills get paid. It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it (unless you’re an employee of a larger company). One of the best ways to make sure your business is running smoothly is by bringing in a digital strategy consultant. If you're looking to improve your company's efficiency and margin, digital strategy consulting can help you achieve this goal. Consultants can help you take advantage of new technologies out there and improve your company's performance. With their help, you'll be able to target areas of improvement and see a significant boost in your company's overall efficiency. 

Three-quarters of businesses signify that their marketing campaigns are influencing their overall revenue.

An expert consultant can offer your business much more than just access to the latest and greatest digital tools. They can also help you develop strategies for using those tools that are designed for maximum efficiency. This means that your data will be more accessible and polished, and you'll be able to avoid the risk of anything being lost or repeated. Plus, a consultant can also be useful for streamlining client communication. This way, you can build long-lasting relationships by providing customers with more value for their investment.

3. Generate Higher ROI

 You're already taking the necessary steps to ensuring a high ROI by being mindful of the investments you make for your company. However, we understand that it's not always possible to make the best decision or find the right solution without help. This is where working with a digital strategy consultant comes in - they have the knowledge and experience needed to guide you towards making choices that will benefit your company in the long run. Furthermore, they're able to do all of the heavy lifting so that you can focus on other aspects of running your business. With their help, you'll be able to maximize your revenue and set your company on the path to success.

4. Acquire Fruitful Partnerships

No matter how old or established your business is, partnerships with other businesses and corporations are key for long-term growth potential. In fact, if you choose your partnerships carefully, you can completely transform your company objectives. This, in turn, can substantially upsurge your client base. In other words, a consultant will pave your way towards the right direction to become competitive in the digital world.

5. Adopt Digital Transformation 

By undergoing digital transformation, you'll be able to say goodbye to the old ways that are no longer working and cut down on costs for employees, products, and services. Having a consultant will help you to be more available and accessible for your customers so that you can provide them with the best possible experience and climb to the top of your industry. Your digital strategy will lay out a clear path for you and your team to follow so that you can become relevant in the digital age.

Wrapping up

A digital strategy is important, but it isn't the be-all and end-all. The consultant you hire should have the experience and team to execute the strategy and produce results. Once the campaigns are launched, ask the consultant to collect data and provide insights about what worked and what could be improved. 

With the current business landscape, many businesses are having to readjust their plans to meet customer expectations. This can be a lot for any company to handle on their own, which is where hiring an expert can be very beneficial. 

The right digital strategy consultant will help ensure your company can adapt to rapidly changing markets, which is key to staying ahead of your competition. If you're thinking of taking the next steps, get in touch with our experienced professionals today.

Facebook Ads vs Google Ads - Who Wins?

Paid ads are a crucial part of digital marketing.

There are two major players for paid advertising. One is Facebook Ads and another one is Google Ads. And as a digital marketing expert, this question keeps getting in my mind over and over again.

Which is better?

Facebook Ads or Google Ads?

Some marketers say that they are getting good results from Facebook Ads. And some of them say they are performing well with Google Ads.

But who is the real game-changer?

Let's dive in this topic and explore both of them. I will explain the major differences between both, in this article. It will give you clarity about both ad platforms.

Facebook Ads:

Facebook is a social media platform. So, people do not login Facebook to find any product or service. They login Facebook to consume content (images & videos) inside the platform. 

We all know, Facebook has a lot of information about their users' gender, age, location, interests, demographics and so on.

When you start advertising on Facebook, people may or may not be interested in what you are offering. But you can easily reach your target audience for what you are offering your products or services.

Let me make you understand my point with an example:

Let's say I am offering my Digital Marketing Services for people looking for marketing consultation and online marketing services. People may be interested in it or maybe not. I have no way of knowing for this information.

As per my experience, I run Facebook ads for only those people who are most likely to be interested in service instead of showing it to everyone on Facebook.

I majorly selected age group of 25-40 and majorly focus on business owners. People who are interested in the topic of "Digital Marketing". It gets the good targeting right, but it still not intent-driven (where they are looking for me).

When I run Facebook Ads, here are the points what I experience:

• Low CTR (Click Through Ratio)
• Lots of Impressions
• Low cost of impressions

This is the hidden truth that people who are interested in what you are offering might be less but the cost is also low. It means you can filter out the highly interested people from a large group of potentially interested people.

If you are trying to reach an audience who doesn't know the existence of your product, then Facebook Ads are really good for you. Normally, people might not be searching for it proactively. It is also good for the branding and recall of your product and service.

Facebook Ads is the outbound marketing strategy where you are reaching out to people instead of people reaching out to you.

This is all about my experience with Facebook Ads. If you want more information, then read Facebook Ads guidelines.

Now let's compare it to Google Ads.

Google Ads:

As you all know, Google is a search engine. People search on Google when they want something.

In Google Ads, you cannot get much information about who the audience is but you can get information about what they are searching for.

There is the better term of what they are searching for, that is called keywords.

So, they are making their intent very clear with the search keyword. We do not worry about their demographics and interests so much. But we have to do keyword research very carefully according to search competition, volume and maximum bid.

Since you are going to look at what people are searching through keyword research and you are going to show ads to them. So, age is not a barrier for potential customers.

(Please note - I am not talking about display or Youtube advertising, I am talking about search engine ads when I say Google Ads here.)

Let us take an example to understand:

Let's say people are searching for "best digital marketing agency"

The search intent is very clear.

People who search for the best digital marketing agency are looking for a solution. I can run an ad for this and let Google tell them about my Best Digital Marketing Services Packages.

Here is the thing, what I get with Google Ads:

1. Higher CTC - Why high CTC? Because only the people looking for me, are seeing my ads on Google.

2. High CPC - Why high CPC? Because I am getting high-quality targeted traffic.

3. Higher cost per acquisition or cost per lead but higher quality.

Many people think that Google Ads are costly hence they don't want to use it. But it's my personal experience that Google gives better quality leads than Facebook.

You should not worry about the CPA, just think about ROI (Return on Investment)

In Digital Marketing terms we call ROI to ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).

And that's the difference between the two platforms.

Conclusion:

I wouldn't say that Google Ads are better and Facebook Ads are better. Both work effectively in their own ways. But if you need quality, firstly consider your business niche and then choose an ad platform. I generate more than 200 leads from Facebook and more than 500 leads from Google Ads.

Keep yourself updated with Digital Keshav on Instagram @digitalkeshav1. 

What is ORM? What is its role in SEO?

You must have heard about SEO and ORM. For many years, professionals utilized the SEO practices to improve the ranking on the search engine. SEO became a never-ending battle in the late ’90s and is continuing to rank better. 

SEO has affected many online and offline businesses and has become one of the most prominent digital marketing methods. But relying on SEO isn’t enough. It is required to maintain and deploy some other tactics such as ORM, that is, Online Reputation Management. 

The combination of both aspects will not only improve your search ranking but also the brand image of the business.

Before proceeding further, do you know what SEO and ORM are all about? If not, then I am sharing the answer below.

What is SEO?

SEO, as you understand, involves the techniques and tactics to enhance the visibility of websites on search engines. It involves increasing the traffic and rank of the websites. It entails multiple factors that influence the search engines to move the websites on different positions or ranks. 

SEO involves different keyphrases that rank for a single website or a page. These keyphrases are ranked through the algorithms that take multiple factors, into account, for ranking. Search engines like Google have more than 300 factors that are analyzed before placing any website in a particular position. 

What is ORM?

ORM is a broader and more prominent term than SEO. You can say that SEO is a key part of many ORM campaigns. Online reputation management involves the visibility and image of a brand in front of the end-users.

SEO majorly focuses on driving ranking on search engine results page (SERP), while ORM deals with the online reputation of a brand. It targets to build and manage the brand reputation or positive perception of a brand. 

ORM involves different websites that rank for fewer branded terms. For this, it combines various disciplines of digital marketing such as 

• SEO
• Web Development
• Content Development
• Online Public Relations
• Web Analytics 
• Social Media optimization and marketing

ORM is a multi-channel approach that targets reputation building by some activities that include

• Building SEO and user friendly website 
• Maintaining positive social media presence
• Managing online reviews and ratings on different websites
• Doing discussions in forums
• Sharing useful and informative content on different platforms
• Maintaining online PR
• Web analytics and so on.

This multi-disciplinary approach of the ORM is what makes it different from SEO. 

Benefits of ORM Beyond Search Ranking

ORM has numerous benefits that are beyond search engine rankings. I would like to mention some of them.

• Trust - If you have a good brand reputation, people would like to trust your brand more than others.
• Word of mouth - When you have five-star rating or reviews, people speak about you. They refer you to their known ones as well.
• Profits - Having a good reputation increases your chances of getting more business and profits.
• Reach - You can reach to the audience that you might not reach with search ranking.
• Risk - You have fewer chances of risk because people move with the crowd.
• Employees - Companies having a good online reputation gets talented employees to work for them.

How SEO and ORM are Connected?

Both SEO and ORM are aspects of digital marketing that go hand in hand. How? Let me tell you. 

As specified above, SEO is a primary part of ORM. Therefore some of the off-page SEO activities are utilized in the ORM that is

• Business/local listings are targeted for link building but can be utilized in ORM in terms of ratings and reviews.
• Spammy link removal saves businesses from bad links and distance websites that are not good for business’ reputation.
• Brand mentioning helps you to get a high-quality backlink and also brand awareness.
• Press Releases also get backlinks and increase brand awareness.

These are some of the SEO techniques that are utilized in good ORM strategy.

How are SEO and ORM different?

When it comes to the difference between these two, the major difference is that ORM utilizes SEO as its discipline. But when you dug deeper, you will get some other differences as well. Check out some of the differences below

Working

SEO focuses on improving the ranking or position of a website on the search engine on some targeted keyphrases. 

ORM works on building and maintaining brand reputation by creating a positive perception among people.

Number of websites

SEO provides results to one website at a time. A single website ranks on different positions for different targeted keywords. 

ORM includes multiple websites where your brand is present or can be presented. It involves social media sites, business listings, etc.

Focus

SEO revolves around search engines and professionals use SEO practices by considering search engine guidelines. Whereas, ORM works around brand reputation and changing the people’s perception of a brand.

ORM strategies are defined according to the business activities and the clients a business has. 

Revenue

Both of the digital marketing aspects are used to generate leads and revenue for a business. SEO does it by generating organic traffic through search engines.

On the other hand, ORM does it by improving the brand reputation and image in front of their audience.

Goals

While SEO is all about generating traffic and improving ranking, ORM is utilized to build trust and credibility among the audience.

Online Reputation Management Techniques and Tactics

I hope now you have a clear understanding of ORM and its relation with SEO. Now let’s talk about good and successful online reputation management techniques.

• Optimize your website not just for service or product keywords, but also for the branded keywords.
• Increase your online presence by building local listing profiles and optimize them to improve search ranking.
• Keep your eyes on the reviews that your users are doing for your business. Manage reviews positively no matter what type of review the user has done.
• Ensure that the backlinks your website has, are not talking about something negative related to your brand. Therefore, links should be relevant and authoritative.
• Don’t forget to monitor the brand mentions. Make sure that websites mentioning your brand, are not spoiling your brand reputation. If they do, remove those links.
• Survey your customers regarding the improvement in your business products and services and analyze the insights.
• Share newsworthy content of your business through Press release websites. It will be beneficial for both brand awareness and link building.

ORM or SEO - Which one is for your business?

The easiest way to decide which one is your business need, simply perform the following things

• Search your company on Google.
• Check on which position your website is appearing
• Look for the other websites where your business is present.
• Examine the information and inspect to find anything negative.
• You can do all the above things with your employees' names.

If you encounter anything negative about your brand during the search, it’s time to improve your online reputation. Consider the fact, if you have found negative things by googling your company, your users are going to find them too. So, it's the time for you to go for ORM of your business.

If you don’t find anything negative (which is great), focus on improving your SEO. You can also start the ORM to give more power to your business and to increase your brand awareness.

Both of the strategies are profitable if implemented genuinely and professionally.

Conclusion

As you can see, both SEO and ORM are equally important for a business. Although both are different but are still connected. If you want a good online reputation, you need to implement a good SEO strategy. SEO makes people get to you and ORM ensures that they don’t leave you.

8 Proven Strategies to Increase Blog Traffic

If you are a blogger like me, then you may have been facing the difficulty in getting traffic on your blog. Despite publishing the quality and relevant content, you may lack traffic. The reasons can be many but the most important question arises here is how to gain blog traffic. 

You can find a content pool of diverse strategies that may help you in gaining traffic. But before implementing any of these strategies, just ask yourself, “Are these strategies reliable and good enough to be implemented?”

If it is yes, then you can go for some. Experimenting is a good thing, but if you are provided with the tried and tested tactics, then implementing them won’t do any harm. Therefore, in this post, I am going to share some proven tactics and methods to increase your blog traffic.

1. Go for the content that people are looking for

Before creating any blog post, analyze and understand what people are looking for. I have seen many bloggers that only talk about their own achievements in their blogs. This may excite them, but not the readers. Recognize what people want to read. You can choose the trending topics by using tools such as BuzzSumo, Ahrefs or platforms like Quora, AnswerThePublic, etc.

Be picky in terms of the topic that you are going to present in front of your readers. 

Tip - Avoid posting latest news or random rants as much as you can, if you are an authentic blog. 

Such content pieces can give huge traffic in the beginning but once the interest of the readers fades away, your content is no use.

Instead, go for the informative posts that can provide consistent traffic and can rank easily on search engines.

Go for the topics such as How-tos, tips with count (7 tips), guides, etc. This type of content can provide you with passive organic traffic.

2. Write by keeping user’s search intent in mind

Whenever a user types a query in the search engine, he/she must have an intent behind it. Consider yourself as the end-user and find out the search intent. Now the question is how to understand the user’s search intent. 

Well, simply go to Google and search for something. Google will provide you with all the best content pieces it has. For example, if a user types “digital marketing tips”, he/she is basically looking for information related to digital marketing or advertising. 

Now analyze the content of these top-ranking blogs and understand what they are providing that is fulfilling the user’s search intent. 

Tip - Choose and write on topics by keeping search intent in mind. This makes your content more relevant and you can rank easily on search engines.

Remember, Google always prefers to rank and show the content that is relevant to the user’s search intent and that people want to see. 

3. Write in-depth content 

After you are done with the research part, focus on writing the in-depth content. 

Tip - Creating a topic with detailed information and a good length can gain ranking and therefore can increase blog traffic.

Target long-tail keywords in your blog post and make it as natural as you can. You may have noticed a blog ranking for multiple related terms. The reason is quite simple. Google understands the variations that users use while looking for something. For instance, different users may type different queries having the same search intent.

User 1 - How to treat dengue patients?

User 2 - Tips to treat dengue patients

User 3 - Treating patients of dengue

Now, these are distinct queries having common search intent. The users are looking for ways to treat dengue patients. 

In this scenario, you may see the same result in the SERP because Google identifies the variations and frequently ranks the same pages for multiple related terms.

So, my suggestion to you is to provide, as much as possible, detailed information to the readers. It will increase your chances of getting ranked in the SERP and you may gain blog traffic.

4. Include Links in the posts

If you notice my previous blogs, I have done the internal and external linking of my blog posts. Internal links are links associated within a website in which you provide links to the other page of the same website. Whereas external links refer to providing the links to other authority websites. 

If your website has some pages that are ranking in good positions, you can link them in other pages that need a boost. This refers to the internal linking. It will help in improving the performance of the pages in search engines.

Tip - Check the positions of the pages on Google Search Console. GSC provides all the pages of your website that are ranking on high positions.

When you write a blog, you may pick some resources from other websites such as stats, reports, survey results, tools, etc. While doing so, you can add the link of the reference sources in your post to increase the visibility of your post.

5. Focus on the Link Building

Being a digital marketer, I have often heard that link building is dead. But this is just a myth. Quality backlinks always provide a share in generating organic traffic. You can use numerous link building strategies such as content reposting, broken link building, outreaching, etc. But my suggestion is to go for guest blogging. 

There are a lot of websites that allow users to write and post on their websites and give links in return. The thing that matters are the relevancy and the quality of the content. You can either link your website’s blog or the website itself, depending upon the guidelines of the guest blogging website.

All you have to do is to find the websites that allow guest submission and create content according to their guidelines.

Tip - If you are struggling with the guest blogging sites, you can find them using advanced search methods.

Advanced search allows you to find the guest posting websites in your niche. Some of the operators to do an advanced search are

• [your_topic] “write for us”
• [your_topic] “guest post”
• [your_topic] “guest article”
• [your_topic] “become an author”
• [your_topic] inurl:contribute

These are some of the operators. You can find more on Google. With this advanced search, Google will display websites that allow guest submissions.

6. Promote content on Social Media

You can share the links of your published work on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.

As you know, graphics and videos are the best methods to increase your reach.

Post-eye-catchy and informative graphics or videos related to the posts that you want to promote. Engage with your users and communicate with them. 

Tip - Videos can increase your landing page conversions by 86%. Use videos in your blogs and on social media platforms as well.

Promote your content on the different communities such as

• Facebook Groups
• Slack Communities
• Forums
• LinkedIn groups

Each community or forum has its own set of rules and guidelines. Read their rules and post only, if they allow you to do so. Don’t spam rather become an active member by engaging with other members such as leaving comments, liking their posts, etc. Build relationships with them and you will get the chance to share your content.

7. Target Question-Answer Websites

Question-Answer websites or discussion websites can bring a lot of traffic on your blog. You can target Quora, Disqus, Reddit and other websites like these, to increase traffic. As per my opinion, 

Quora is one of the best platforms to generate traffic and to showcase the expertise that you have. You can answer the questions in your niche. I have been active on Quora and it has an audience of 300 million people. 

Have you ever noticed that Quora appears on the first page of SERP? If not, then make a search on Google. Most of the time, while you make a search, you will find Quora on the first page of the SERPs.

Tip - Quora ranks for millions of keywords in Google. Answer the questions that are new and in the trend of your niche. You will get views easily.

Just like Quora, Reddit is a popular platform with 330 million members. But the difference lies in the guidelines of the websites. Reddit is one of the high traffic generating platforms but it is not an easy nut to crack.

Reddit doesn’t allow self-promotion at all. If you want to work on Reddit, you need to understand the culture of Redditors. If you don’t do so and directly do posting on any subreddit, your post will be marked as spam and the further attempts will result in a ban.

Tip - Choose subreddit of your niche and then look out, if they allow links or not. Go through the top posts on Reddit and analyze their methods of posting.

You need to be a pro when it comes to Reddit. 

8. Paid Promotion

When I speak about paid promotions, many businesses may not like this. But it is the rapid method to generate traffic. You can do social media marketing or search engine marketing depending upon your business niche.

Tip - In most cases, social media marketing generates traffic at lesser prices as compared to Google Ads. Rest depends upon the business type, location and target audience.

No one can neglect the fact that paid marketing starts to give results from day one. Yes, it costs you but you can optimize your campaigns to save your money.

Summing Up

All the above-mentioned tactics are important and work. Although you can use it individually, yet combining them all will definitely do wonders for your website or blog.

When you rank on good positions, you get higher traffic on your website or blog. If you want to succeed and grow your traffic, use these tactics.

Try these methods and let me know, if I missed something, in the comment section!

Digital Marketing Tips for Healthcare Businesses

Are you a doctor and looking for ways to get more customers for your Hospital and Clinic?

If yes, then this blog is for you and for all the professionals who are working in the healthcare industry and want to drive patients and help them.

In this article, you will get the best digital marketing tips and strategies that are helpful in the healthcare sector to approach and generate patients to help them.

Well, I understand how much difficulties you are facing in COVID19. So, read this article very carefully; these amazing tips will definitely work for you whether you are a doctor, a health coach, or running a hospital or a clinic.

Tip number 1 is - Social Presence

Social Presence is one of the biggest factors that you can engage directly with your audience through DMs or comments. You should increase your social presence to increase your customers on social media. So, start advertising your business on social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc.

I personally recommend Facebook and Instagram platforms. These platforms help to build a loyal and trustworthy brand for your hospital and clinic. And you can get in touch with your audience.

To engage with your audience, you have to make video content, informative and awareness graphics, humour posts related to your industry. 

Remember that one thing, video content is always better than other content. So you should focus on video content and start to make informative videos like- How-tos, tips, precautions, preventives of a particular problem and make testimonial video content of your previous and existing customers.

All these sorts of videos can generate a good followers count and audience count for you.

Tip number 2 is - ORM

ORM is an acronym for online reputation management. I have seen doctors on platforms like Practo, Lybrate, etc. where they consult their patients directly and also get new customers. Till the time you are on such platforms, you will get new customers. But if you are so much dependent on these platforms, you cannot bring long-term results.

As per my suggestion, you should focus on the online reputation of your business. Simply, register your business on different platforms like Sulekha, Justdial, etc and ask your customers to put reviews on these platforms. This is the online reputation management of your business.

ORM includes managing your business reputation on every online platform where you have created your online business presence.

Tip number 3 is - Local SEO

Local SEO is the best strategy to bring new customers and most important local customers for you. So, don't waste the time, add your business in Google My Business and start local SEO with location-based keywords for your business. If you don't know how to add your business on Google map listing, click the link below and get step by step process how to do this:

"How To List Your Business On Google Map"

You can hire an SEO professional for Local SEO of your business, it is a really helpful tip to increase your customers by Google listing of your physical address.

These are the 3 major digital marketing tips for healthcare businesses, majorly for doctors, health coaches and clinics or hospitals.

Hope you like this blog! Subscribe this blog and keep connected with Digital Keshav.