Posts

Handling Negative Business Reviews

/in /by

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Handling Negative Business Reviews

It happens to all of us at some point. No matter how hard you work and no matter how much you try to do your best, a customer eventually has a negative experience. Unfortunately, when a customer has a negative experience no matter the fault, you can get hit with a negative review. While it surely stings, it’s not the end of the world. Luckily, you can actually take steps towards turning the negative review into a positive experience for both your business and the customer if you handle the situation the right way. Below, we will be going over some tips for handling negative reviews with the help of Cormac Reynolds from VelSEOity.

1. Don’t React

One of the main things that you want to do is avoid having a knee jerk reaction to the customer who is upset. By responding with negativity, you can guarantee that you will encounter even more negativity which can spiral out of control. Avoid reacting negatively and slapping back to the negative review for the entire world to see. While you want to respond swiftly, you need to do so in a calm and collected manner. If necessary, vent your frustration offline by doing some exercise or by conducting deep breathing exercises. It’s important to understand that a negative review can be a good opportunity to showcase your customer service.

2. Respond Quickly

As mentioned, you don’t want to delay when you are dealing with a negative review. Take quick action and don’t let the negative review fester. Ignoring a negative review is one of the worst things you can do. You want to deal with the negative review as soon as you calm down and can approach the situation with a calm mind. You should take steps towards acknowledging the customer’s pain points and let them know that you are there to remedy any situation they feel they’ve been wronged in.

3. Don’t Make Any Excuses

Even if you feel as though you did nothing wrong in the situation, it is important to avoid making excuses. You want to accept responsibility no matter what because “the customer is always right.” By showing the customer you understand they had a bad experience and you want to make it right, you will be able to showcase that you care about your customers for the world to see.

4. Make It Better

Once you have established communication, you will want to take steps towards actively resolving the problem. When you showcase that you are able and willing to take responsibility for the situation and that you are willing and able to make it right, you have a good chance of convincing the customer that it was a one-time mistake that didn’t warrant such a harsh review.] A lot of times, you will even be able to convince them to change their review and showcase the steps you took to remedy the situation which can turn it into a positive for your business.

One way to do so is to hire an online reputation management agency that can help you suppress and repair comments, all while monitoring your online presence. Make it better by taking control of what information is out there about you and your business and what consumers see. You can not only suppress negative Google results but can work to impress everyone who comes across your business online and create a long-lasting and positive impression. The experts can ensure your reputation is a good one and that you’re able to rebuild and regain trust with your customers and potential clients. Let today be the day you work to improve your business reputation and get off on a better foot.

5. Ask For Positive Reviews

When you are dealing with customers that just want to be angry or even trolls that haven’t frequented your business, you simply have to showcase your motivation for resolving the problem. Another good way to minimize the negative impact a bad review can have on your business is by asking for positive reviews from satisfied customers – this helps you pre-empt such issues and helps protect your reputation. This will help you drown out of the negative feedback with positive feedback. A lot of customers are ready and willing to help out their favorite businesses by writing positive reviews. All you have to do is ask! It is very important to encourage feedback across all review channels for various reasons:

72 percent of customers look towards online reviews when they are attempting to make purchasing decisions. There are search engines like Google who even include online reviews when they are ranking query results. Therefore, the more positive feedback you are able to accumulate, the higher you will likely get your rankings. The more positive feedback you are able to get, the better your chances of converting a prospective customer into an actual customer since they will be much more inclined to frequent your business due to having a high customer satisfaction rating.

7 Dental Marketing Strategies You Should Be Using in 2020

/in /by

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, 7 Dental Marketing Strategies You Should Be Using in 2020

With almost 200,000 dentists practicing in America, having the best dental marketing strategies in place is a must.
People have to trust you to allow you to work on their mouths. There are things you can do to become more trustworthy to people, and we are going to talk about some of those.

Continue reading this article as we talk about dental marketing and the strategies you should use to get customers.

1. Optimize Your Google My Business Page

If you aren’t familiar with your Google My Business page, you need to make sure you’ve claimed it. Claiming your Google My Business page is easy.

All you have to do is Google it and follow the simple instructions on how to secure your page and verify your business.

Once you have your GMB page, you’ll be able to fix it up to look like a mini website. This is important because it will show up at the top of the Google pack when people are looking for dentists in your area once you’re starting to rank.

You can add recent photos and even update it like social media.

2. Create a Trustworthy Website

Now that you’re getting attention from the search engines, you need to be sure they are going to a website that commands trust.

When you have a slow website that looks outdated, that doesn’t make people feel like they can trust you. They might even question whether you are out of business or not.

Look at some of the most popular and well-trusted dentists in your area, and see how their websites look. You can model after their design elements and have a designer put something just as high quality together for you.

3. Rank Your Business in the Search Engines (SEO)

One of the best ways to get relevant customer’s attention is through the search engines. Learning SEO, which is also known as search engine optimization, is the way to give your website the best opportunity to appear on the front page of the search engines.

Search engine optimization requires work both on your website as well as off-page factors like building links to your site.

When you want to rank in the search engines, you should choose a relevant keyword for the pages you want to rank. Focus on that main keyword and build around it by using other keywords that are similar around the content.

Finding the right dental keywords for your company is important, so you’ll be able to target people that care about what you have to offer.

4. Keep Your Social Media Pages Active

If you don’t have a Facebook page for your business already, now is the right time to go create one. Having a social media presence is going to get people’s attention and make them see that you are serious about keeping your business active online.

5. Engage Customers With Video Marketing

While people can come to your website and read content about how amazing you are, the best thing you can do is create videos to post on your website. Videos allow people to see who you are and how you operate.

Not only should you be on the website, but you should also feature your workers, and show off the office.

Giving customers a behind the scenes view of your office will put them at ease and make them more likely to call and make an appointment. Video marketing is also another way for people to discover you on sites like YouTube.

6. Submit to Dental Directories

When people are looking for dentists, they might go to a trusted dental directory. You want to make sure that you’re on all of your local directories, so people will continue to see your business name when they are searching.

The more people see your business name, the more likely it is that they are going to do further research to see if you might be the right choice for their dental needs.

Submitting to dental directories is usually free. Depending on the area where you live, some of them might have some fees. Try these directories for a little while, and if they don’t give you the results you want, you can drop them.

7. Use Email Marketing

Email marketing is the best way to stay top of mind with your past customers. They need to come back in to get their teeth checked periodically, but you might need to give them reminders, and the 9 word email strategy is the best way to do this.

Some people might opt-in for your text reminders, but most people are more comfortable with giving out their email addresses for notifications.

You can use email marketing for more than reminders. If they have a birthday, or if there is a holiday coming up, you can use your email blast to wish them a happy holiday.

They know they need to come into the dentist, and just seeing your name might be enough to have them call and set an appointment up.

Implementing the Best Dental Marketing Strategies

Now that you know more about dental marketing strategies, you’ll be able to grow your dental practice. Not having enough customers can cripple your business, but proper marketing can make all the difference.

Do you feel like you need more help with your marketing efforts? Our site is full of articles that can help you as you’re growing your business and working on going to the next level.

Browse our site, find your favorite section for business marketing, drop a bookmark, and come back soon to read more.

Marketing Advice for Your Business

/in , /by

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Marketing Advice for Your Business

You may have the best product or service in the world, but if you do not know how you market it, you will not be able to sell it. What this means is that your competitor with an inferior product can potentially make far more sales than you if they have the marketing wherewithal you lack. It may seem easy, post a few adverts on social media, the product will sell itself. You need to understand now that this is not going to work. You need a fully thought out marketing strategy and the ability to maintain it into the future. So here are some ideas to get you started.

Your website

You need to invest in your website. It has to be fully functioning, quick loading, and work in all browsers and devices, as a prerequisite. There is no point in having a beautiful marketing campaign that points to a rundown old website that doesn’t even work properly. There will be a huge disconnect, and people will think they are in the wrong place. Your website needs to be discoverable, so you need to invest time in working out keywords from your target market, and what they are likely to input into a search engine. Once you have done this, you can fully SEO (search engine optimization) every page of your website. Content on the site needs to be updated regularly, so having a blog is essential these days.

Brand awareness

You need a good brand for the business. So think logos and taglines. These must be used on all your content. The idea is to get the brand into people’s minds. In addition, think about your personal brand. You should create your own site where you can authentically promote your business. As a person, you can connect with people more easily, so developing your personal brand is essential. This means that if you have any accolades which make you the perfect person to listen to, such as having gone through a master of occupational therapy program for your clinic, tell your story on a vlog.

Social media

Any business that wants to succeed in the modern world has to have a presence on social media. It is a free way to advertise, and it gives you an unprecedented way to learn about your target audience and connect with them. You need to create a separate method of marketing for each social media platform. However, the onus is on quality posts over quantity. You need to have some glossy images, a good story to tell, think about social responsibility, and what you are doing to help the plant, for example. Have a look at your competitors and members of your target audience to get an idea about what they share. This will give you some ideas about how best to proceed. In terms of frequency of posts, about two to three times a day, every day. You need to be there, but not whitewash people’s feeds as this will have the opposite effect to the one you want, they will switch off.

Content Marketing Success Through Audience Targeting

/in , /by

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Content Marketing Success Through Audience Targeting

It seems to happen to the best of us. You devote hours and hours of time to writing a great piece of content that you just know is going to drive hordes of people to your website. Of those hordes of people, hopefully, a few will become customers. For some reason, however, it doesn’t work. Very few people read it and those who do aren’t engaging with you or your business. You’re left wondering what happened and what you could have done better.

Often the problem lies in a disconnect between the content creator and their audience. If a piece of content fails to pick up traction, it’s usually because it doesn’t fit what the audience was searching for. Content marketing towards your target audience is an essential piece of the puzzle. Before you can effectively deliver your message, you need to understand who you are marketing it to and why.

Understanding your target audience is complicated and involves more than one step. Here are some ways to achieve content marketing success by targeting the right audience.

Conduct Market Research

The fact of the matter is if you want to know who your target audience is, you’ve got to do the research. Both SEO and content marketing demand research to be successful. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking up keyword strategies or choosing topics for long-form content, you have to begin by researching what topics people want to know about.

Thankfully, you don’t have to just guess. There are several tools available that can help you find out what topics are trending and how to rank long tail keywords. Audience Key, for example, allows you to optimize content, quantify search audience, map your keyword strategy, and much more. You can find data and analytics that will help you know what’s working and get to know your audience.

Sometimes the research may take just as long as it does to produce your content – and that’s ok. It’s better to take the time to produce content for your intended audience and see results instead of spending all that time to effectively have the content flop.

Engage Your Readers Using Emotion

In any case, you’re looking for your readers to have an emotional response to what you’re saying. Of course, you want clicks, shares, and conversions. It’s your business after all. None of that follows if you can’t reach your audience on an emotional level, however.

One of the easiest ways to drive engagement on your site and connect with your audience is to ask them questions. You want your audience to share their own feelings and opinions to connect with you. Ask your readers what they want to hear about. You can also end your content with direct questions to get the conversation going in the comments. Additionally, ask their opinions on your recommended products and services. Encourage conversation, questions, and healthy debates.

Reconnect With Your Audience

If you are having trouble engaging your audience, try starting over again. You’ll need to get a good understanding of your audience. This includes:

  • Find out what your audience is passionate about, and write content for them.
  • Connect with your readers on an emotional level to build a community. Encourage conversation and questions.
  • Research the market demographics of your audience thoroughly.
  • Remember to include a call to action when you want your audience to do something. Often, people simply need to be told what you’d like them to do.

It’s easy to see how these guidelines can help increase the amount of engagement your content receives, as well as sales and conversions. When it comes to content marketing, it doesn’t have to be a mystery.

6 SEO Trends You Can’t Ignore This Year (and Beyond!)

/in /by

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, 6 SEO Trends You Can't Ignore This Year (and Beyond!)

Whether you’re a business owner or a marketing manager, you’ve probably heard about the importance of SEO for your company on more than one occasion. Maybe you’ve even already put in the leg work toward kickstarting your SEO and creating a solid plan to grow your online presence.

But, having an SEO plan in place isn’t enough. It needs to constantly be looked at, tweaked, and changed in order to fit with trends and algorithm changes. Google made headlines in 2019 with its BERT algorithm update, and the search engine shows no signs of slowing down on changing the way it promotes pages and content.

That’s just one example of how quickly things can change and how fast technology moves. If your company isn’t keeping up with it by allowing for an adaptable SEO strategy and by using quality SEO services, it won’t take long for you to fall behind in your marketing efforts.

So, what are some of the trends you need to keep up with in the world of SEO, in order to stay relevant?

1.  User-Focused Content

For years, you’ve likely focused on keyword strategy and link-building. While those things aren’t just going to disappear overnight, it’s important to start shifting the way you create content. For example, with Google’s ever-changing algorithms and people’s desire to form more relationships with businesses, rather than just be target demographics, content is going to have to focus more on user intent.

It’s not going to be enough to piece together words and phrases people might search for. Even keyword research tools may become less useful as time goes on.

So, what can your business do to keep up with the change in where content is going? Listen to your customers, clients, and followers. Focus on their questions, concerns, and comments through every aspect of their journey with your company, whether they use your product/service or not. By really listening to what people are saying about your business, you can hone in on what they’re looking for, and develop your content accordingly.

2. High-Quality Content

It’s no coincidence that the top two spots on this list focus solely on the content of your website. Content is king for a reason, after all.

Not only is it important to shift your content more toward the reader, but it’s equally important to make sure that content is readable.

What does that mean?

Simply put, if the content you’re pushing out on a regular basis isn’t easy to understand, it’s going to start to rank poorly. Google might not be advanced enough to play the role of editor yet, but there’s no doubt that day is coming, soon.

In the past, releasing new content regularly was a good tactic for boosting your rankings. While updating your content regularly is still a must-do, it’s not enough to put together poorly-written pieces just for the sake of a ranking. Instead, your mindset should be to have the best content on the web, consistently. If you don’t feel that someone on your team has the writing skills that will continue to get you noticed, it’s worth it to hire professional writers, even on a freelance basis.

3. Managing Your Reputation

As more businesses and websites compete for high-ranking spots, your reputation will start to play a big part in where you’re found on that list. Google will look at the E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) of a business based on its digital impression.

You should only be publishing content about things you know. With words like “fake news” trending in today’s society, it’s easy for people to be skeptical about things they read online, so you have to prove yourself as a trustworthy source of information. Always double-check what’s being published to make sure it’s accurate and true. One false statistic or exaggerated claim can end up causing a lot of damage.

Your reputation will also be scrutinized when it comes to negative comments and reviews posted about your business online. Negative comments may have deterred potential customers away before. But, now? They could turn Google off from giving your site a high ranking.

If you have other people writing for you or contributing pieces of information to your website, it’s just as important to make sure they have a solid reputation, too. Quoting someone who has been proven to be a fraud or someone with no authority in a particular subject could make your content (and business) seem just as ill-informed.

So, do your research, write what you know, and work hard to preserve positive customer experiences.

4. Focus Your Attention on Mobile

Did you know that 60% of Google searches are done on a mobile device? Or, that over 2 billion people use their smartphone exclusively to access the Internet?

If you’ve been ignoring optimizing your website for mobile, it’s time to make it a priority. Mobile search is only going to become more popular over time thanks to a society on the go, and consumers are growing used to instant gratification. If your website doesn’t load quickly on a phone or is impossible to navigate, they’re going to turn away in a matter of seconds and look elsewhere.

It’s worth it to higher graphic designers or web designers who specialize in mobile web development to make sure your site is easy to work through, even on a smartphone. It used to be the norm to create a site on a desktop and later optimize it for mobile. Now, the trends are showing us that it may be time to start flip-flopping that old rule of thumb.

5. Building Your Brand

More companies are starting to focus on paid advertising, especially on social media. There was a time where spending very little on social media could get your business heavily-noticed. Now that the practice is becoming more saturated, the ROI is reduced. It’s also likely that the cost will go up, so you’ll have to spend more to get less.

Chances are, you’re going to have to continue to spend something on social advertising, just to stay relevant. But, it shouldn’t be where you focus all of your attention. Instead, shift your goals toward building your brand and promoting brand awareness.

Both Google and Bing have made it known that linkless mentions of your business are used as ranking signals. So, the more people that are talking about your company online, the better.

When you utilize social media listening, you can pay attention to how often your brand is being talked about and what people are saying. It also gives you a great opportunity to interact directly with customers and followers of your business. When you give your business a personality by talking directly with your audience, you’re developing trust. That can help you to stand out among competitors who are simply following the normal trends with canned responses and limited social interaction.

6. Voice Search Optimization (VSEO)

By 2022, voice-based shopping is expected to reach up to $40 billion. That’s just one of the staggering stats associated with this phenomenon that continues to grow in importance. VSEO is huge among teenagers and young adults, so it’s undoubtedly going to take over the next generation of searchers.

What does that mean for your business? Since people are asking more direct questions via voice (and typically doing so using full sentences), you’re going to have to consider exactly how those questions will be asked.

What makes VSEO different from traditional search is that when someone is typing, they’re more likely to use snippets of a phrase, or just one to two words in order to get the information they want. Since searching via voice tends to feel more conversational, they’re going to use longer questions and phrases. Those same questions and phrases need to be brought up in your content in order to be seen. Think about how most questions start, with the same few words:

  • How?
  • Why?
  • What?
  • When?

If your content isn’t including those key terms or the answers to the questions people are asking, you’re going to become less relevant when it comes to your overall ranking.

So Many Changes, So Little Time

With technology changing so quickly and Google coming out with new algorithms all the time, it can feel as though it’s hard to keep up with the latest SEO trends. But, there’s one major theme that you can probably see through all of these trends: The user should be your focus.

When it comes to the content you produce, the trustworthiness of what you say, the ease of which people can view your site via mobile, and how well your brand connects with consumers, it all comes back to user experience (UX).

So, while keeping these trends at the forefront of your marketing/SEO plan will help to keep you from becoming stagnant in your efforts, the most important thing to keep in mind is how those efforts are targeted toward the people searching for you, and those who have already discovered you. That’s a “trend” that will only continue to become more important each year.