Author: southernviewmedia

In the digital marketplace, your website is the front door to your business. Similar to brick-and-mortar stores with a fresh slab of paint, new and updated websites can help attract potential customers browsing online. Websites are a great investment, and even more so when they are utilized correctly. Read below for expert-approved reasons on how a new or updated website will benefit your business!

Increases Your Audience

Unlike a brick-and-mortar store, customers don’t have to be walking the street to find your business. A new website makes it easier for customers to search, browse and support your business, whether down the road or a few states over. In conclusion: a new website is especially beneficial if you wish to expand your audience.

Stays Up to Date With Trends

How many times have you looked at a website and instantly knew that it was outdated or just confusing? Whether it was the selected font style or color scheme or layout, you instinctively recognize that the site had not been updated in a while. Your customers will also notice if your website needs to be updated! However, if your website aligns with current visual trends and easy navigation, then customers are much more likely to trust you as a source and more likely to spend time on your website!

Refreshes Branding

GREAT (not good) web design not only attracts customers but also establishes your business’s brand. A clear and decisive brand is greatly effective at communicating your business’s identity, which further increases your credibility. With so many voices clamoring to be heard online, make sure that yours stands out with a refreshing and vibrant website that fully conveys your brand.

Promotes Your Services

A new website is great at promoting your services and products if designed correctly. During a 5-minute coffee break, no one wants to read long blocks of texts. Instead, a website with visually-appealing images and videos is much more likely to make an impact! Images and videos are better at conveying your message and in much less time.

A Lasting Investment

A new website is an advertisement that will never expire. Instead of relying on, and paying more, for temporary television or newspaper ads, a website is a permanent advertisement! Websites are also easier to adjust as news or policies change, instead of having to completely revamp an advertisement per campaign.

In summary: a website serves many purposes, including revitalizing your brand and promoting your services. Ultimately, you have less than 15 seconds to grab a potential customer’s attention on your website. That is only a quarter of a minute. Make your website work for you by reaching out to the digital ninja team at Southern View Media!

Southern View Media is a full-service digital marketing agency that was created to help local businesses understand the complex digital world and make educated decisions regarding their marketing. We are a balance of talent, intuition, business sense, media solutions and metrics to be a creative problem-solving machine. We emphasize our clients’ needs and are driven by results. We are ready to provide businesses with marketing and advertising services at any level!

Contact us to find out how we can help with your business’s digital presence. For a free consultation to formulate a strategic and affordable plan, call us today at 251-517-9425!

Communication has always been one of the most important components of a business. Now that technology has become a part of everyday life, companies have to use creativity to integrate it into their business to strategically stay ahead. Email marketing is a new way to grow businesses by connecting and expanding their audience. Below are examples of how your business could benefit by implementing email marketing into your strategy.

Connect with the Audience

Gaining and expanding a customer base is the primary focus of all businesses. Emails establish a connection and keep consumers abreast of current events within a company or industry. This communication builds trust and familiarity, which encourages repeat business with previous customers. It is important to find the right frequency of emails, so your customers are hearing from you enough to establish a connection, but not so much to become a nuisance, which can lead to customers opting out of receiving emails.

Increase Credibility

The more consistent, high-quality information that is distributed to an audience, the more a business is associated as a reliable source of information. This process establishes companies as industry leaders and they often have an increase in traffic via word-of-mouth recommendations and email sharing. This increase of credibility makes it easier for product or service because of the trust of consumers.

Cost-Efficient

Without emails, physical communication becomes more of a hassle. Not only is email marketing great for communication, but it also saves money! Money that was originally directed to flyers, envelopes, postage, etc., can all be saved when the information is switched to online communication. Emails are able to be used for a variety of purposes. They can be used to promote events and fundraisers, or maybe even to create newsletters to keep customers informed. The money saved from cutting mailing materials can now be directed to assist other departments to grow.

Expand Your Audience and Brand

Switching to emails is like tipping the first domino. Once your business connects with its consumers and establishes itself as a field leader, the audience naturally expands and grows. Emails are easily shared among family and friends. Including an opt-in box in emails allows readers to easily subscribe to ensure they do not miss the next email. To drive people from the email to a website, include a clickable link to a blog or specific page. Emails are a great connector between business creatives and consumers. This is why emails help to grow a brands’ presence. The regularity of emails develops a voice and style that becomes easily recognizable for consumers. Haven’t decided what you want your brand to be? Create a brand guide to layout guidelines for colors, writing voice and images. By following this guide over time, brand identity will form and be associated with the business.

In a world of constant advertising and marketing, it is imperative for companies to set themselves apart to attract the eye of customers. Utilizing email as a part of a marketing strategy should be the next big step in growing any business.

Southern View Media is a digital marketing agency that was created to help local businesses understand the complex digital world and make educated decisions regarding their marketing. We are a balance of talent, intuition, business sense, media solutions and metrics to be a creative problem-solving machine that is fueled by client needs and driven by results and we are ready to provide businesses with marketing and advertising services at any level. From standing out to breaking into a market we help people find you, trust you and share you. Contact us to find out how we can help with your business’s digital presence. For a free consultation to formulate a strategic and affordable plan, call us today at 251-517-9425, email us or fill out the contact form here!

It can be hard to differentiate your business in a culture where anything is available at the fingertips. How do you set yourself apart and bring customers to you? How do you keep customers coming back? Here are a few ways online reviews can help you break into your target audience.

How to Get Customer Reviews

Sometimes, it’s as easy as asking. Reviews can be left in many places like Facebook, Google or Yelp, meaning that a majority of people have an account where they can access reviews about businesses. Because there are so many platforms, it’s important to ensure your business is steadily growing reviews. For example, many restaurants have a reward system for customers where if they leave a good review, they receive a free dessert or drink. This method can work for any business. If you see a customer who is satisfied, simply ask if they would consider leaving a review. This grows the quantity of reviews and again builds trust with potential consumers.

Help Customers Find You

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is crucial if you want your website to appear on major search engines like Google and Yahoo. Reviews are a great way to boost your ranking and get you on the first page of results.

Build Confidence with the Community

Reviews help legitimize and show potential customers what sets you apart from the competitors in the field. A steady stream of great reviews shows the public that a business can continuously provide an excellent experience.

Feedback on the Business

Reviews are a way to have a fresh set of eyes to give your business positive and negative feedback. While it is great to have a large number of reviews, if a majority are negative, this will keep potential customers from your business. This is an opportunity to improve the negative aspects of the business and push your business forward. It is also a great way to capitalize on the positive reviews and continue to exercise behavior that brings customers back.

Create a Conversation

Not all reviews are positive, but each of them do need a response. As a business owner, it is important to show consumers that their opinion is heard and valued. A negative review may come from miscommunication or misunderstanding and answering the review can resolve the situation and build trust with readers. Read about how to handle a negative review here.

Celebrate Success

Okay you’ve done the work and gotten amazing reviews, now what? Do not be afraid to share your success! Many businesses use their reviews as advertisements on social media or billboards. The greatest spokespeople for future customers are past customers. Your customers want to celebrate your success with you!

Customer reviews are still fairly new to the online world, but they are quickly becoming the best way to check how a business is doing, create a conversation with customers and boost business. Reach out to one of our social media managers to see how your business can utilize and flourish from online customer reviews.

Southern View Media is a digital marketing agency that was created to help local businesses understand the complex digital world and make educated decisions regarding their marketing. We are a balance of talent, intuition, business sense, media solutions and metrics to be a creative problem-solving machine that is fueled by client needs and driven by results, and we are ready to provide businesses with marketing and advertising services at any level. From standing out to breaking into a market we help people find you, trust you, and share you. Contact us to find out how we can help with your business’s digital presence. For a free consultation to formulate a strategic and affordable plan, call us today at 251-517-9425, email us or fill out the contact form here!

In this day and age, it’s imperative to keep up with the ever-changing digital evolution. From social media to Search Engine Optimization, your business needs to stay on your client’s radar. One clever way to ensure your business is drawing in new people as well as bringing in returning clients is a blog. Blogs work for you by targeting potential clients, boosting website traffic, establishing yourself as an industry expert and developing a community.

Targeting Potential Clients

A blog is a great way to create and promote content that educates and entices the general public about your work field. By bringing in consumers who are interested in your blog posts, you are bringing in potential clients. For example, if a contractor has a blog post about the benefits of having stainless steel appliances, a consumer looking to redo their kitchen can find that blog post and choose that contractor to complete their renovation. If the same contractor has posts like Designing with Hardwood Floors or Most Popular Backyard Trends, then the client may read these posts as well and decide to go ahead and redo the flooring or backyard too. As more blog posts are added to a website, more information and resources are available for consumers to explore.

Boosting Website Traffic

The more quality blog posts a business is promoting, the more interested readers are. Once a new reader is on a blog page, they are likely to quickly browse through the website to get a quick gage of what the business does. This is a great way to cultivate new businesses or partnerships. Website traffic is also needed to boost a website in search engine results. Major engines like Google and Bing will not promote a website if it is not generating traffic. These search engine results are becoming more relevant as clients turn to the internet for information.

Be Seen As An Industry Expert

Businesses gain credibility by creating content and educating the public. Over time, with reliable content, businesses are seen as leaders in their field and develop trust with their readers and clients. These posts do not always have to be lengthy. They can also be opinion pieces or contain facts about the industry or the history of your business. Blogs can be as work related or personal as you want! Most consumers do not spend more than five minutes reading a blog, so quick and easy to read information is imperative.

Develop a Community

A successful business continues to bring back customers. Any business needs to have a balance between the “business” side of work and the relationship between clients and the employee. Blogs are a way to keep in contact with the business’s community and develop relationships with new, potential, and returning customers, for free! Who doesn’t love free business growth? Blogs can also be shared on social media or by your consumers, which is another way that blogs help grow and develop a business.

Southern View Media offers complete digital display marketing strategies that will generate new leads, build awareness and increase sales for businesses in the Mobile and Baldwin County, Alabama, area. Our team will create a custom proposal showing the estimates of viewable impressions in your chosen geographic area. We can also provide the estimated traffic our digital display campaign can create for your website. To match our professional research, analysis and strategy, Southern View Media will also design and produce impactful, creative digital display ads in a variety of sizes to convey the message you want to send to desktop and mobile users. We’ll monitor and adjust your campaign for optimal budgeting on a daily basis. You’ll then receive full reporting on how the campaign is performing month to month, providing a clearer target market profile of your audience. Start reaching more clients quickly and easily through digital display advertising with Southern View Media. Call us at 251-517-9425 or visit our website.

Bad reviews on Google are bound to happen every now and then to any business. They’re not fun and no one wants to hear that a customer had a bad experience with their company, but it is unavoidable. Although bad reviews are inevitable there are definitely things that can make the situation better. In some instances, you may be able to fix the issue quickly, and in others you may find yourself on the brink of a far more serious problem. Today, we will be going through five different ways you can approach the situation and how you can get the review removed from Google if it is warranted.

1. Don’t Rush

   Oftentimes, people will take the wrong course of action without thinking about the consequences because they don’t want other customers to see the negative review. But in these matters you can’t afford to do the wrong thing. When you see a negative review on any platform, don’t panic. Read the review thoroughly and try to put yourself in the customer’s shoes as best as possible.

2. Assess the Situation

   Make sure you have the full story before replying to the review or any other course of action. It’s important to know what led to the negative review and what caused the customer to leave it. For this step you may need to talk to your employees and see who was in contact with this customer, or ask for the customer’s contact information and reach out to them directly.

3. Respond Quickly

   Taking a long time to respond definitely doesn’t make your company look any better. Most people might think you are trying to avoid the issue. As soon as you assess the situation and feel that you have all of the necessary information, you should respond. Make sure you take ownership of the situation, be honest and offer to fix the issue in any way you can. Give them an alternate form of communication and get them offline to resolve the issue, do not continue a conversation back and forth online.

4. Is the Review Spam?

   On Google Reviews you can flag a review so they will know to remove it. If you find that the person who has left the negative review is a bot or has never done business with your company, this is the best course of action to take. In order to speed up the process you can call Google and follow up on the flagged review.

5. Rectify the Issue

   No matter what, try your best to get the issue sorted out. When customers leave negative reviews, they most often don’t leave them lightly. Take ownership if the issue was in fact a mistake on your company’s part, apologize for the unsatisfactory experience and whatever you do, don’t leave it unattended or unanswered.

   Southern View Media offers complete digital display marketing strategies that will generate new leads, build awareness and increase sales for businesses in the Mobile and Baldwin County, Alabama, area. Our team will create a custom proposal showing the estimates of viewable impressions in your chosen geographic area. We can also provide the estimated traffic our digital display campaign can create for your website. To match our professional research, analysis and strategy, Southern View Media will also design and produce impactful, creative digital display ads in a variety of sizes to convey the message you want to send to desktop and mobile users. We’ll monitor and adjust your campaign for optimal budgeting on a daily basis. You’ll then receive full reporting on how the campaign is performing month to month, providing a clearer target market profile of your audience. Start reaching more clients quickly and easily through digital display advertising with Southern View Media. Call us at 251-517-9425 or visit our website.

Tools are what help you get things done. Whether your office is closed for the day, or your job is primarily remote, these free online resources below make it easier than ever to work from home!

Asana 

Asana is a great app for looking at projects on a bigger scale. Divide your projects into smaller task lists, specify deadlines and communicate in real-time on the app itself. Add your entire team to your project to get a full-scale view so everyone is in-the-know. You have access to create reports and process insights, as well as balance privacy and transparency. This means if you have a client, you can include them on that specific project and are able to run reports to show the progress of their project. 

Basecamp

On Basecamp, divide all of your work into projects and assign them to team members. It is a great virtual toolkit with checklists that make it easy to watch projects move towards completion. There are also message channels so your team or client can talk in real-time. Keep your projects organized by utilizing folders and tabs that are easy to create and find. To-do lists keep you on track and are helpful letting your team know what is due, who is supposed to complete it and the deadline. Basecamp also has an app, so you are able to access all its content even on the go!

Google Drive and Google Hangouts

The services that Google offers never seem to end. Google Drive gives you 15GB of free space and is compatible with numerous file types. You are able to share, store and create documents as well as backup your computer files. Google Hangouts is a free messaging, voice and video chat service. With this tool you are able to hold conferences, meetings and share your screen all in real time. If your team already works with Google, then these two services are perfect for working remotely. Both of these apps are also available on your phone making being organized easier than ever!

Slack

Slack is a great resource that combines the services you and your team already use in the office! The app sorts your different topics of conversation into channels, so it is simple for your team to access information anywhere at any time. With their latest biggest redesign, it is even easier to use and is made for mass remote working. With this tool, you won’t slack on communication!

Zoom

Similar to Google Hangout, Zoom is another great free video conferencing service. It also offers other services like personal video chat conference rooms, a cloud system and personalized apps. So whether you are hosting a meeting or joining, Zoom offers the solution for your company.

Milanote

Milanote is an online visual board that helps your projects stay organized. Their easy-to-use tools include notes and task lists, uploading and sharing photos and videos, saving text, images and videos from the web and more! You can also upload notes and photos on the go from your phone, so they are ready to use when you log back in on your computer. You can arrange your visual boards any way you like with their drag and drop tool. Whether you want to have your own personal board or a shared board with your team, you can do both with Milanote! Creative professionals from Facebook, Nike, Google, Apple, Adobe and more use this tool to keep their big projects organized and on track.

Working from home can either benefit your productivity or decrease it. Don’t let a crisis or day at home slow you down! Utilize these six tools and their services, and you and your team will be sure to not fall behind. Now, see what you can get done!

Digital marketing allows businesses to easily get people familiarized with their products and services through several different strategies. One such method to generate leads and build brand awareness and identity is through digital display advertising. Digital display is the process of using display ads, aka banner ads, as a form of marketing to reach Internet users via their desktop or mobile devices. You know digital display ads as the in-page banners that you see at the top, sides and throughout other websites you visit. Display ads can be shown to a very specific group of people, helping businesses get more bang for their buck for digital and mobile display advertising. Random marketing strategies are a thing of the past. Companies are able to benefit from highly targeted digital display marketing methods like geofenced and behaviourally targeted ads to reach out to new leads. At Southern View Media, we can put your business’s products and services in front of the right sets of eyes through these tactics.

Geo-Fencing

Geo-fencing is the process of designing and selecting a digital audience based on a predetermined distance. A geo-fence is essentially a digital perimeter for a real-world place. The “fence” can be a radius around a large-range area, complicated perimeters or a set of boundaries like neighborhoods or voting districts. Ads are then placed in web-based apps or services within that fence. Marketers and businesses can choose who their ads are shown from a chosen zip code down to the exact street. Addressable geo-fencing even allows you to reach a specific household based on their address.

Geo-fencing and following is a great way to effectively reach your target audience. Businesses can engage users as they enter, stay and leave geographical areas or learn about their offline lifestyles from location data. Do you want to show your product to people in town for a big expo? Does your business count on foot traffic stopping by? You can set your geo-fence parameters where your ad will have the most impact. With mobile display advertising, businesses can reach new leads wherever they go and, since more people are on mobile devices than ever before, mobile display advertising can get as targeted as showing a promotional offer to shoppers as they pass by storefronts.

There are multiple benefits to using geo-fenced digital display ads. Geo-fencing allows marketers build brand awareness and make revenue all in quick turnaround time. Businesses can analyze in-app behaviors to suggest products and services in real time. Geo-fencing for mobile display advertising creates a lot of foot traffic and online traffic because of its highly relevant ad placement. Let’s say for example, you’re walking around downtown Mobile, Alabama, and you want to see what the traffic is like on the Bayway. When you pull up your traffic app, you see an ad for a special offer for a restaurant just a block away and, voila! Before you know it, you’re seated and ordering your discounted meal from the lunch menu.

Behaviorally Targeted Ads

As a website user visits different sites on the Internet, they generate data through a variety of means that can be used to determine the relevance of digital display ads for that user. This technique is called behavioral targeting and requires collecting information called cookies through several types of sources about a web user’s browsing and shopping behaviors.

The information gathered helps make more specific ads for that user based on habits and interests, so publishers then show those ads in apps or web browsers. Data like web searches, purchase histories, most visited sites, likes and follows are used to create profiles. A user profile shows businesses and marketers what an audience likes, dislikes and wants to purchase. After analyzing patterns and the information available, users can be separated into different target market groups. Using distinguishing data points from these groups, advertisers can avoid unappealing messaging that negatively affects sales.

Data-centric behavioral targeting provides plenty of benefits for brands, and the consumer, too. Behavioral targeting helps web users avoid uninteresting and irrelevant ads, receiving offers and access to products and services they like, leading to an improved user experience on the Internet. For advertisers and businesses, however, behavioral targeting helps increase user engagement, ad click-throughs and conversion rates. Data management platforms help harvest audience data, organize it and use results for successful behaviorally targeted marketing strategies.

Southern View Media offers complete digital display marketing strategies that will generate new leads, build awareness and increase sales for businesses in the Mobile and Baldwin County, Alabama, area. Our team will create a custom proposal showing the estimates of viewable impressions in your chosen geographic area. We can also provide the estimated traffic our digital display campaign can create for your website. To match our professional research, analysis and strategy, Southern View Media will also design and produce impactful, creative digital display ads in a variety of sizes to convey the message you want to send to desktop and mobile users. We’ll monitor and adjust your campaign for optimal budgeting on a daily basis. You’ll then receive full reporting on how the campaign is performing month to month, providing a clearer target market profile of your audience. Start reaching more clients quickly and easily through digital display advertising with Southern View Media. Call us at 251-517-9425 or visit our website.

Your business’ website is the key to the company’s overall success in the digital era. Think of your website as a storefront window display, showcasing your products and services and promoting new deals and offers. As more and more businesses make the push towards strategic digital marketing, you need to ensure that your website is filled with up-to-date, current information and engaging content so that your website is ahead of the crowd. Your website absolutely must give both Google and your audience what they want and what they expect. The best method for accomplishing this is SEO. Search Engine Optimization is the practice of bolstering your website’s user experience and content in order to raise your ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs) so that more traffic is driven towards your site. Here are a few tasks to complete in order to best optimize your website for SEO.

1. Make Sure Your Basic Information is Correct

   First off, your basic information should be consistent across all your pages and platforms. If your basic information isn’t the exact same wherever that information can be found, Google will hold it against you and consider your business more unreliable than most. This basic information is generally referred to as your NAP information (Name, Address, Phone). Your NAP information, with the addition of your email information, is what’s at the core of people’s search habits. If you have a Google My Business listing, make sure it matches that information for all of your locations exactly as it is. If people can’t find your business’ name, location and contact info, then there’s not really much of a point in Google referring your site to its audience, is there? (If you don’t have a Google My Business listing, don’t worry. We’ll go over Google My Business later in this blog.) When you clearly state who your business is, where it’s located and what it offers, search engines are much more likely to recommend it to others.

2. Analyze Your Data and Conduct Keyword Research

   Connect the dots from user behavior reports and Google Search Console traffic data to get a more complete picture of how people interact with your website and where that traffic is coming from. You can study how people behave once on your site and also analyze key metrics like the amount of sessions from a user, bounce rates, click-through rates and more. You can learn a lot about the demographics in your audience from these data points. Use your analysis to adapt to the trends that you find. Once you begin understanding how your audience comes to your site and how they interact with it, then you can start researching the most relevant keywords to your audience’s search habits. There are a plethora of tools to use to help you discover great keywords to pepper throughout your web content. It’s important in this task to try to think like how a search engine user thinks. Why would someone search for a particular word? What would they be hoping to find? Implement keywords into your headlines, subheads, title tags, meta descriptions and body copy. (However, be careful not to ‘keyword stuff’!)

3. Apply Your Research to Creating Value-Rich Content

   Poor quality, boring and uninformative content drives users away. Expanding on your data and keyword research with creative, engaging and search-relevant content is your next step to optimizing your webpage for SEO. You want to create as wide a net as possible to bring in search traffic, so create an individual web page for every product, service and location of your business. Make a comprehensive list of all aspects of your company. This will be the framework for your sitemap. Once you’ve outlined the architecture of your website, then start working on fleshing out each page with keyword-infused content. Don’t sell your audience short with nondescript, surface-level information. Google rewards sites that go into well-informed detail regarding the topics its users are searching for. The longer people stay on your site, the higher you will rank on SERPs.

4. Optimize for Local SEO

   Nearly half of all Google searches are local. People are looking for nearby solutions to their queries, so it’s vital for your SEO strategy to account for local SEO. First, you need to claim your Google My Business listing for all of your locations. Make sure that all of the NAP information is correct and consistent across all of your webpages. You’ll be able to correct and update all of your information with Google as you refine your processes and information. Next, schema markup allows Google to better match your business to local search engine users. Schema markup lets Google organize your data more efficiently and pushes that data more in relevant search results. Set your schema markup anywhere you describe your company on the website. Do this for every location on each city page. Once you’ve gotten squared away with Google, add your business to local directories. There are countless directories online for almost every industry out there. Adding your business to these directories strengthens your SEO ranking with quality backlinks. Once again, keep the information correct and consistent with what you’ve already put out there. Add a page that showcases positive reviews to boost your local SEO ranking. Google My Business once again comes into play here, as Google My Business reviews are the second-most influential ranking factor for local businesses. Finally, local SEO won’t do much if you don’t analyze local search terms and create local content. Implement other nearby locations into your keyword usage. Keep it relevant for people in your town. You know how people talk and think where you live. Use that to reach out and find your audience.

5. User Experience Will Take You Far

   How pleasant your site is for users to interact with definitely affects how a search engine will rank your business’ web pages. People nowadays expect fast, quick and easy from every site they visit. You must account for mobile site visitors in this day and age, as more and more search engine users rely on their smart devices for search queries. Google has even begun prioritizing mobile-first indexing in order to reward sites for addressing mobile UX friendliness. Responsive design matters for mobile UX. It does not take long at all for a user to get fed up with having to put up with a site not optimized for mobile use and leave. The same goes for loading speeds as well. You have basically less than three seconds (and that’s being generous!) for your page to load before a user drops your site and moves on. Google’s PageSpeed Insights is an incredibly useful tool to help you determine what you can do to quicken load times for your pages. When you make your business’ web pages fast and responsive for desktop and mobile, you’ll see the sky as the limit for your SEO rankings.

Help your business succeed by utilizing SEO to increase your profitability. Once you have your website correctly optimized with all the elements of SEO working together, consumers will be more aware of your company and the services you offer. Contact Southern View Media to find out how we can help with your business’s digital presence. For a free consultation to formulate a strategic and affordable plan, call us today at 251-583-2605 or visit www.southernviewmedia.com. We are a Google Trusted Agency and will be happy to answer your questions.

Digital marketing provides the opportunity for restaurants small or large to grow their business with any size budget. Recent studies have demonstrated that between 70%-80% of people look up a business online before visiting the store in person or making a purchase. Digital marketing can help restaurants establish a strong internet presence that will expand your business’ reach by improving customer experience and retention. But merely getting online isn’t enough to grow your business substantially, you need to have a strategy. However, if you’re like most restaurant owners, you may not have the time to personally dive deep into studying digital marketing concepts. That’s why we’ve compiled this quick breakdown of some digital marketing strategies to help your restaurant grow.

1. Reach More People with Search Engine Marketing

Over 90% of online experiences begin with the use of a search engine, with a majority of people using Google as their search engine of choice. Getting your business out where people are spending time online is your goal. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of bolstering your website’s design, content and user experience in order to improve your ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). One important aspect of search engine marketing that can be quickly implemented is keyword analysis, knowing which keywords are most commonly searched for within a given topic. Integrating the right keywords throughout your web content will signal to a search engine’s crawler bots that your site is highly relevant and a good recommendation for that search engine’s user, leading to your website receiving a higher listing on a SERP. There are plenty of excellent programs and resources to determine which keywords are strongest. Local terminology is also important to factor in like if your restaurant is near a notable landmark or in a particular district of your city.

2. Start a Blog

Another strategy that complements search engine marketing is having a blog and keeping it regularly updated. For restaurant owners, blog posts can be anything from recipes to new menu additions to covering special events hosted and much more. Really, your blog can be whatever you want to write about! It’s all about giving your restaurant a brand voice and identity. You want your blog to reflect your business’ personality as closely as possible. However, we highly recommend that your blog topics focus on highly relevant keyword analysis. By writing a blog with fresh and relevant content to how people are looking up local restaurants on search engines, search engine ranking bots crawling through your site will recognize and reward the content for being a strong match for what people are searching for.

3. Highlight What Makes Your Restaurant Unique on Social Media

A lot of restaurants post the same kinds of posts on their social media pages like images of popular dishes and other specials, but what can you do to stand out from the crowd? What makes your restaurant unique? Social media that highlights what your restaurant has that nowhere else does leads to a stronger brand identity and increases customer loyalty and retention. Do you have a scenic view that can’t be beat? Take a wide photograph and use it as your Facebook Page’s cover photo. Do you have musical performers entertain customers? Post a video of the band playing a crowd favorite and ask for your followers to suggest their own. Show off your staff in appreciation posts! They’re the strongest connection your customers will have with your restaurant so you need to make the greatest impression possible. Posts that help people know the staff that will be preparing and serving their meal will strengthen the customers’ relationship with your restaurant. Knowing what makes your restaurant unique will take some study of your competition, but asking your customers what they personally enjoy the most about your business is an excellent way to get started.

4. Capture People’s Attention with Video

One of the overwhelming trends of the past ten years has been the rise of video marketing online. More than half of social media users spend over an hour watching videos online, creating a great opportunity for restaurants to create content in a format more and more people are preferring to interact with on a daily basis. However, just because you post a video doesn’t mean a lot people will see it. Quality counts more than anything. People won’t consume content just because it’s content. It has to be good content. So, while handheld videos from your phone may be ok for showing a crowded night or a busy kitchen, you will want to hire a video production team to record high quality content of new dishes and products. Also take note of where your video content will be posted. The way different platforms are used affects how users consume content. For instance, short, 10- to 15-second videos go great on Snapchat and Instagram, 1- to 3-minute videos on Facebook and Twitter and longer form videos are a great length for YouTube.

5. Cross-Promote with Local Influencers & Brands

A recommendation from a trusted source can achieve leaps and bounds more for your restaurant than a typical post would. It doesn’t mean you should just wait around for one to fall in your lap. Reach out to local personalities and popular brands you might use in your recipes. Cross-promote each other on social media or in your blogs. Invite local bloggers and restaurant critics to dine with you while sampling some new dishes and talking about local matters. Record it all for a great video post. Have your guest write up a review for even further content. You’ll both benefit from emphasizing your respective place in local culture and from a widened reach through the other’s fan base and followers.

6. High-Quality Food Photography

Showing your menu selections in the best light (literally) across any marketing platforms you use will only work to bring in customers. Businesses need to use the right shooting equipment and editing programs to show off your chefs’ work when words simply won’t do justice to the presentation. If you can make people feel the way they do when they see their meal being walked out just for them when they’re sitting at their computer or are on their phone, you’re going to get people sitting at your restaurant’s tables. Use high-quality food photography for your menu, website, social media pages, Google My Business listing, emails and text campaigns. They’re your images; use them! These photos will help build your brand identity, increase your sales and customer retention, engage your audience on social media and gives you a chance to brag on your employees!

Hopefully, these six digital marketing strategies will help your restaurant thrive and grow. Remember, digital marketing can fit within any budget, so it’s always best to be making fresh and relevant content constantly. The team at Southern View Media is here to help design an effective digital marketing strategy map for your business. Helping businesses establish themselves online is what we do best.

Southern View Media is a digital marketing agency that was created to help local businesses understand the complex digital world and make educated decisions regarding their marketing. We are a balance of talent, intuition, business sense, media solutions and metrics to be a creative problem-solving machine that is fueled by client needs and driven by results, and we are ready to provide businesses with marketing and advertising services at any level. From standing out to breaking into a market we help people find you, trust you, and share you. Contact us to find out how we can help with your business’s digital presence. For a free consultation to formulate a strategic and affordable plan, call us today at 251-517-9425, email us or fill out the contact form here!