An integrated marketing strategy protects you today, tomorrow, and in the future
Would you feel safe driving your car without car insurance? Would you feel secure running your integration firm without business liability insurance? The answer is probably a very firm “no.”
The primary purpose of any insurance policy is to protect your person, business, or property against the possibility of a future event that leads to loss or damages. It’s a risk management tool that ensures you have safeguards in place to support you when the unexpected happens.
Similarly, investing in strategic digital marketing offers you short and long-term benefits that can help your business thrive during the good times, weather the bad times, and maintain an active online presence every day in between.
Just like your car, health, and business insurance policies are developed with coverages that meet your specific needs, One Firefly can help you find the right services to create an integrated marketing strategy that keeps your business moving forward today, tomorrow, and in the future.
Like a good marketing agency, we’ve got you covered. Keep reading to learn more.
SEE ALSO: An Overview of One Firefly’s New Blog Products
Marketing as Insurance for Today
Insurance policies start providing benefits as soon as they go into effect. Buying car insurance allows you to start driving without the risk of breaking the law in many states, while purchasing health insurance allows you to finally schedule the doctor’s appointment you’ve been putting off.
Similarly, signing up for marketing services can help you start growing your business right away. Although all marketing strategies require time to reach optimal performance, some strategies start seeing results faster than others. One of the fastest-moving strategies is search engine marketing (SEM), which has the potential to make an immediate impact on your lead generation and traffic flow.
- Google ads. SEM is an effective strategy for driving new, high-quality traffic to your website. Custom Google ads are highly targetable for your key audience demographics, locations, and relevant search terms. With strategic planning and execution, Google ad campaigns can drive increased brand awareness, top-of-page visibility on search engine results pages, accelerated lead flow, and high-quality web traffic in a shorter period of time than organic strategies like blogging. SEM can help your business start meeting growth goals while you continue to build your online presence across other channels with organic methods.
Other types of paid advertising — like social media advertising and display advertising — are also good options for expanding brand reach, boosting brand awareness, and driving traffic back to your website faster than organic strategies. And you don’t need to sacrifice quality for speed. Paid advertising platforms have detailed targeting options that ensure you’re getting your ads in front of the right audience.
Marketing as Insurance for Tomorrow
When the market hits a downturn, it’s a gut temptation for many businesses to cut marketing expenses to control costs. However, it’s critical to keep marketing through uncertain times. As the popular adage goes: When times are good, you should advertise. When times are bad, you must advertise. Continuing to market during downturns can help your business retain existing customers and remain competitive in your industry. If you go completely dark (and leave your existing customers hanging), you risk losing market share, brand awareness and visibility, and loyalty when a more prosperous market returns.
Investing in search engine optimization (SEO) to build a highly visible and authoritative online presence is one of the best ways you can prepare your brand for the inevitable downturns. SEO is a set of strategies that improve the chances of your website and content appearing in the Google search engine results when web visitors research terms related to your products and services. Consistently publishing fresh content, using audience-targeted keywords in your content, having mobile-optimized content, and having a fast loading speed on your website are a few examples of best-practice SEO tactics.
SEO takes time to work and see results. That’s why it’s an excellent insurance policy to invest in during economic upswings and busy periods. Paying into search engine optimization during the good times helps you build up SEO credit that you can rely on during the not-so-good times. So what do you need to lay a strong SEO foundation?
- Website. A website is your business’ digital showroom and just as important as your brick-and-mortar showroom or storefront. Plus, it’s the foundation of any SEO strategy. First and foremost, the website is where Google crawls and indexes your blog content to determine where it will appear on search engine result pages. Having a fast and mobile-friendly site will give you brownie points with Google. Secondly, your website itself is fertile grounds for SEO. As your business grows, you can expand your site with content-rich, optimized pages that perform well on Google and drive curious visitors to your brand.
- Blogging. Blogging is one of the most powerful marketing tools at your disposal. Publishing regular content is a great way to educate your audience, demonstrate credibility in your industry, and earn the trust of prospects and customers who view you as a thought leader in the field. Just as importantly, SEO-enhanced blogs help your website appear on the first page of search engines like Google, one of the primary places where web visitors are looking for your products and services. SEO-optimized blogging is an incredibly valuable long-term strategy because once your content starts ranking well, it will be a consistent driver of high-quality traffic to your site. While one paid ad only funnels leads and traffic to your site while it’s running, one blog has the potential to generate repeated leads and traffic over time just by living on your website.
Marketing as Insurance for Day-to-Day
Effective marketing requires continual investment into your brand, outreach, and audience to stay top of mind with customers and keep them engaged with you. Like with any insurance policy, it’s not just about buying into the basic coverages — it’s the add-ons that fill in gaps and offer enhanced protections that strengthen your overall coverage. These marketing add-ons have you covered from all angles:
- Email newsletters. Email marketing with your latest blog content, new offers, and special deals helps you maintain an ongoing relationship with existing customers and drives traffic back to your website through blogs and other content included in your newsletters. Additionally, keeping your audience informed about the latest technologies and what’s possible will position your brand as a thought leader that customers turn to for inspiration and guidance. Email marketing is also a great way to connect with new prospects and provide them with information about your company, products, and services.
- Social media posts. Social media platforms are another place to stay connected with your customers and keep them engaged with you. Hootsuite reports that social media offers businesses the opportunity to create “Meaningful Relationship Moments” — i.e., authentic connections with customers and prospects that result in positive impressions or behaviors. Social is one of the best places to build trust and relationships with your customers, stay top of mind, and inspire loyalty to your brand.
- Live chat. In a competitive industry like technology, superior customer service is a brand differentiator. A live chat service on your website is a valuable tool that allows you to offer fast, real-time support and assistance, provide a personalized customer experience, and start building relationships from the moment visitors land on your site. Live chat is one of the easiest and most accessible ways prospects and customers can connect and engage with you online.
- Online reviews. When it comes to making purchasing decisions, people trust other people more than they trust brands. Having a robust bank of positive online reviews gives you enormous social credibility and trustworthiness in the eyes of prospects in the research phase. Additionally, positive reviews can improve your search rankings for local-specific queries on Google, which makes it easier for prospects in your area to find you.
At One Firefly, we have all the coverages you need to build an integrated marketing strategy that drives continual growth and leads while preparing your business to weather challenging times and come out intact on the other side.
Let’s talk about your marketing insurance policy — reach out today to schedule a consultation with our team.