Marketing? Check!
Effective Marketing Can Grow Your Revenue

Are you just checking the box when it comes to your marketing, or are you actively engaged? If you are not keeping a close eye on your marketing, you are leaving money on the table. Marketing isn’t meant to be turned on and off short-term, or set and forgotten. You have to continuously nurture your online presence to get the most out of your investment.

Aside from customer referrals, the Internet is your best place to grow your presence and gain new customers. There are four elements of a complete marketing strategy that will help you get more customers and grow your business with consistent involvement.

Top Four Online Traffic Sources For Obtaining New Customers:

1). Organic
2). Paid Search
3). Social Media
4). Direct

1). Organic
If someone is searching for a tire, they look on Google. When they click a link that suits what they’re looking for, we consider it an organic delivery to the website. A large part of your new traffic should come from people searching online and finding your website.

How can you get organic traffic and more customers? You have to do it correctly in the eyes of Google, which is not easily said or done. Search engine optimization (SEO) specialists spend their careers trying to find out Google’s secrets and identify what businesses can do to increase organic traffic. Because algorithms are always changing, gaining organic traffic is a long-term effort and requires consistent involvement. But we know this: quality content is key to increasing organic traffic.

2). Paid Search
This is another type of online traffic that goes by many terms. Paid search, pay-per-click, AdWords, and Facebook ads are just a few. They all work the same: you pay for ads based on targeted keywords that will show up in front of your target audience. An example is someone searching for “brake repair near me.” We can target that keyword and a location where we want to draw that traffic from in our ads.

Paid search delivers what you are actually looking for — more brake business, more tire sales, etc. It’s important to remember that even though you might not click on paid ads that you see, many people do. Paid search can have the highest ROI of everything you do online when it’s done right. The key is that you cannot do paid search all on its own. It is most effective with a search engine optimized website and consistent online presence.

3). Social Media
Social media is another part of your online marketing package. Google uses it as a signal for your overall digital presence and how involved you are in your marketplace. It’s also your business’s opportunity to make a first impression. How you present yourself on social media says much more than a few 2-star reviews. It can demonstrate your company culture and how you take care of your customers.

It’s not an option for businesses to opt-out of social media as it is part of Google’s assessments. However, it doesn’t take much to do social right. You don’t need to post every day. In fact, you probably shouldn’t post everyday. This can work counterintuitively to turn off your target audience since they might become annoyed if your posts oversaturate their feeds. Posting just twice a week with good content has been proven to be more effective.

4). Direct Traffic
Direct traffic is where on-the-ground, gorilla marketing works. You can buy ad space on the bus stop, a billboard, magazines, and so on. When people see your ad in person, they’ll type in your website URL and go directly to your website. This is also how returning customers may get to your site.

If you do not see between 9% to 15% in direct traffic, then you are not doing enough to get customers to your site. Check your website analytics and do the math. Website traffic can determine conversions, which determines how many cars are coming into your bays. If you can get more traffic, then you can schedule more appointments and grow your business.

There is no silver bullet in marketing. Good marketing is a combination of doing it all and staying involved to make sure it’s all done right. Having just a website doesn’t check the marketing box anymore. Posting once on social media every three months also doesn’t check the box. If you want to check the box on your marketing, you need to consistently develop your online presence through organic, paid, social and direct traffic.

Interested in learning more? Contact Autoshop Solutions at 866-551-7445, or visit us online at autoshopsolutions.com.

This article is sponsored by Autoshop Solutions.