Is Your Message Connected?
Do you ever feel that your core marketing message is somehow disconnected from your Internet marketing activities? You know what your value proposition is, but when it comes to making it work for you across the web and in social media, something gets lost.
Here are some important action steps to take to ensure your unique value proposition gets through regardless of the platform you are engaging your clients with:
SEO
Bringing your value proposition into your Search Engine Optimization efforts means expanding your keyword targeting efforts to include more than just your primary and secondary keywords. Your goal is to turn your tagline or Unique Selling Proposition (USP) into context-building factors that increase the value of your search engine listings for your audience. For instance:
- Add a “value proposition page” the same way you would add a mission, vision, and “about us” page. Of course, you don’t need to call it a value proposition page, but including a page that is called something like: “What Makes Us Different” will ensure a clear distinction between you and your competitors.
- Use unique Meta descriptions in each of your webpages to ensure that they “talk” to your audience in search engines. Meta descriptions are those short sentences that are displayed when the search engines show your website listing. Make sure your descriptions describe why you are better.
- Use Title tags in each of your major web pages (like your home page), and don’t just list your keywords but instead highlight your USP or tagline, like “Connecting Realtors, Agents, and Homebuyers, Hassle-free.“
- Use “Alt” attributes in images, videos, and other webpage elements that search engine bots can’t read, and also ensure that the file names you use for these images are descriptive and relevant.
- Use context building keywords as anchors, preferably Latent Semantic Indexing phrases. For real estate, try “home market,” “real estate agents,” and other similar phrases.
- Include branding messages in every webpage in a uniform fashion; but don’t force them. You don’t want to sacrifice readability. Add a tagline such as “Connecting Realtors, Agents, and Homebuyers, Hassle-free” in the template of every webpage, always in the same position, just like a shopping cart button.
In addition, consider including press releases and other promotional blog posts in your blogging calendar with the sole purpose of reinforcing your brand and proving your value proposition.
Email Marketing
Email continues to play a central role in Internet marketing as a powerful lead nurturing tool that focuses on expertise and relevance to the subscriber. If you own a CPA firm for example, then:
- Show off your core competencies by sending emails that offer tips, tricks, or expert advice. Include personalized ROI calculators or in-depth accounting advice that the subscriber will undoubtedly be interested in.
- Send only relevant email by ensuring you have as much information about your subscriber as possible. You can include a small part of a lead capture form to ask what your reader is interested in or in what areas of accounting they need help with. Take their answers into consideration when planning your email campaigns. Also, triggered emails (drip campaigns) are an excellent way of staying in touch with your clients and prospects and we highly recommended them.
- Highlight both your expertise and relevance when sending emails when focused on calling your readers to take action, such as downloading material, visiting a blog post, or setting up a consultation schedule.
Social Media
If the key to email in Internet marketing is expertise and relevance, the focus when it comes to social media is brand “persona” and engagement. Let’s say you own a law firm and you want to increase your presence in social media. You should:
- Effectively communicate your brand persona to your social crowd. Most law firms are seen as more formal institutions, so for the most part you should portray this approach in your brand persona: an advisor always available to give meaningful advice. Your brand persona ties in to your value proposition, so be clear about your brand and how you want to portray it.
- When possible, be open and ready to give advice in your area of expertise. Use your social platforms as open discussion areas and turn the conversations into calls-to-action for further counsel as a service. It’s an excellent way to drive social engagement since your fans and followers will appreciate your expertise.
- Use social engagement as a means to avoid estranging your audience. Since you deal with legal conflicts and issues, many people will view your law firm as a third party trying to settle their legal issues for them. What you want them to see instead is an adviser and partner they can rely on, and social media can help you with that.
