This is a guest post that was written by me (Libby Hogan) for Coach Vantage.

How To Market Your Coaching Business: 9 Effective Strategies

We all know that even if you’re an amazing coach or consultant, you need a solid marketing strategy to be able to attract clients and run a successful coaching business.

The kicker though is knowing what to do and how to do it right. And unless you’re a marketing expert, this can be an understandable challenge for many.

The good news is there is an abundance of different ways to market your coaching business. And do so not only within a budget that works for you but also with what’s in line with your strengths, and the target audience you wish to reach.

Meet Libby

Hi, my name is Libby and I’m a web designer, marketing strategist and coach in training. I specialise in helping coaches, like you, to build the business you really want, and live the life you dream about.

In this article, I explore 9 popular marketing strategies that you can use for your coaching business. As well as provide handy, actionable tips to improve your marketing efforts so you can attract more leads.

Marketing Strategies: Common misconceptions

First, let’s dispel some myths to get in the right mindset. In my time speaking with other coaches, a lot of misconceptions would often come up about marketing strategies for their business:

• They associate marketing with having to be “salesy” or even “sleazy“.
• The best way to get extra clients is through paid advertising.
• You absolutely have to multiple social accounts and do Reels, Facebook lives, YouTube videos and [insert every other medium that is every introvert’s worst nightmare here]. ?
• You should be posting on all the different social media platforms, multiple times a day, every day.
• Your marketing efforts should include: [whatever Insta’s latest marketing guru is flogging here].

Gah, no wonder so many get turned off by marketing. More good news though, none of this is true. So, as the old adage goes, ‘stop shouding yourself to death!’

Sure, there are foundations that are consistent in the marketing industry but there are no hard and fast rules. Even if you’re in the same industry and have the same niche as another business, what works and doesn’t work for them, won’t be the same for you.

What makes you unique and special, is also what makes your business special.

So, give yourself permission to take a breath, and not put any unnecessary pressure on yourself.

Choosing which strategies are best for your business to reach more potential clients

With numerous options to choose from to market your coaching business and every guru, each saying theirs is a “must-have“, finding what’s right can be difficult. My advice – ignore all the noise and shiny objects, and answer the following 3 simple questions:

1. What’s in line with your strengths: Seriously, if you suck at making videos but are great at content marketing, give priority to your content marketing! You’ll be able to do it well and more importantly, be more motivated to be consistent with it… and consistency is the key.
2. What will resonate with your target audience: There’s no point posting on Twitter for example if none of your ideal clients hang out on that particular social media platform. Plus, you don’t just want to reach any and all clients, you need to connect with your ideal clients.
3. What works with your budget: While we don’t always want to admit it, budget is often a factor, especially if you are a new business. There’s no need to break the bank though when so many effective, free marketing strategies are available. Find what is comfortable for where your business is now. You can always re-evaluate investing in new marketing strategies down the road.

Before you launch any marketing activities, know who your ideal clients are!

I can’t stress enough how important it is to have complete clarity on who your ideal client is. Without this knowledge, you won’t know what they really need, let alone how to create compelling content that resonates with them.

Before you can market anything effectively, you need to understand your ideal customer completely. Then, integrate this knowledge across your entire coaching business and marketing strategies.

If you haven’t defined your ideal customers yet, or if you’re messaging isn’t quite landing, I’ve already written another article about this which will help. In it, we explore the importance of defining your ideal customers so you can confidently create marketing strategies that work.

Check it out here ? Successful marketing: It starts with your ideal customer

Now, let’s dive into the different ways you can market your coaching business. And remember, you don’t have to use ALL of these. Hone in on the ones that are best for your business.

Marketing Strategy #1. Instagram, Facebook Pages & Facebook Groups

Having an appealing social media profile legitimises your business and is an effective way to attract followers and reach new potential clients. With best practices in place, the multitude of free options is almost always sufficient for many coaches.

If you want to reach even more clients though, paid ads are a cost-effective option. (discussed further below)

Plus, you can be found in multiple ways. Such as through keyword searches, hashtags and even by scrolling through other social media accounts to see who they are following.

Joining Facebook groups is also an easy way to increase brand awareness and start building your network. Like guest posting, this is an easy way to leverage someone else’s larger, more established audience.

Social Media Pro Tips:

• Optimise your profile on all social accounts with a great headshot and make it clear what you do and what your niche is.
• Take the time to create relevant content your current and potential coaching clients will gain value from.
• Social media is a social network, so get in and participate. Don’t expect people to engage with your business if you don’t return the favour. It’s a great opportunity to get the conversations rolling and start building strong relationships with your potential customers.
• Leverage the power of social media apps and scheduling tools to make posting consistently easier. My personal favourites are Later and the Meta Business Suite Planner.
• Facebook Groups: As above, it’s important to engage with Facebook group members as much as possible in order for them to take you seriously and view you as an authority figure in your industry.

Marketing Strategy #2. Start your own blog and guest blogging

Blogging is an effective form of content marketing to attract new clients. It gives you a consistent platform to share your ideas, build your reputation as an expert in your field, and establish yourself as an authority in your industry.

Furthermore, each new blog post can help potential clients understand what services you offer, how much value you can give your customers, what kind of results they can expect and all that before they even opened their wallets.

If your own blog readership is low, guest posting is another option that ticks a lot of boxes:

• Contributing an article to a more established site allows you to reach a larger audience and build your credibility and authority.
• You get a link back to your own website which is beneficial for SEO.
• The blog post will continue to drive organic traffic to your website for as long as it remains published.
• In return, the host website gets valuable content to serve their own audience, as well as drive more traffic to their own website, and all with minimal effort on their part. It’s a fantastic win-win situation.

Marketing Strategy #3. List Your Business on Directory Websites

Listing your coaching business with online directories is quick, affordable and an effective way to target specific online consumers.

Directory websites have a number of benefits in helping you to to reach more coaching clients, such as:

• They allow you to gain an instant online presence, particularly helpful if you don’t have a website yet.
• It can give your own website an SEO boost.
• Niche directories help to build your credibility and provide social proof (for example by including client reviews or through guest posting).
• Pricing varies but most offer plans where you should only need to gain 1-2 new clients per year to get a return on your investment on top of what you the benefits mentioned above. So, the cost-benefit is incredibly good.

Directory Website Pro Tips:

Like all of your marketing activities, directory listings are not a magic wand. You have to do your part also in optimising them:

• Make sure you have appealing content that is SEO optimised.
• Ensure you have a strategy in place to make it easy for potential clients to take the next step with you, such as offering a free consultation or free coaching, getting them into your sales funnel, or something as simple as just getting them to visit your website.
• Always keep track of all your directory listings and ensure your business’s content is always up to date, relevant and fresh.
• As long as the websites are reputable, don’t be afraid to list in multiple directories, the more online awareness you have the better.
• Listing on directory websites specifically for coaches is a no-brainer in terms of not just expanding your reach, but in gaining higher quality, targeted leads for your business.

Shameless plug – my website Coach Connect Australia is specifically for coaches and consultants within Australia and has over a dozen categories to niche down even further.

Marketing Strategy #4. Create a Strategy-Driven Website

A website allows you to showcase your knowledge, credentials, experience, services and success stories, making it an effective means of establishing the credibility of your coaching business and authority in your industry.

Having a website isn’t enough on its own though, in addition to being visually appealing and functional, a conversion-focused strategy is a must-have for successfully converting visitors into clients.

Website Pro Tips:

• Make it easy to use and navigate.
• Make sure it loads as quickly as possible, everything works and no broken links.
• Avoid unnecessary bells & whistles, they just distract from the important stuff!
• Mobile responsiveness is a MUST.
• Have a robust, value-based content marketing plan for each primary page of your site.
• Include social proof (testimonials, reviews etc.).
• Include CTA’s (Call To Action) to create more touchpoints and to start building know, like and trust.
• Utilise the power of lead magnets: Create a free offer (checklist, guide, etc.) that gives your potential client lots of value and an easy quick win. Make sure it’s integrated with your email list so you can build the relationship from there.
• Be searchable. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is an ongoing effort for every online coaching business. For example, research and implement relevant keywords into your content and inbound marketing efforts, include alt tags in all your images, gain reputable backlinks and so on.

Marketing Strategy #5. Speaking Gigs

Similar to joining a relevant Facebook group, speaking gigs are a great way to introduce yourself to your host’s audience. They allow you to increase brand awareness, build connections and networks, and possibly even gain media attention.

Plus, once you have provided value and gained credibility, it’s a great platform to promote your services. Such as a free workshop, your coaching programs, or offering a free session.

Speaking Gig Pro Tips:

• Focus on providing massive value first, before talking about any of your coaching services. Serve first, sell second.
• As always, align yourself with an event that has the same target audience as you
• Know upfront what other business owners will also be speaking about so you can make sure your content is differentiated from there’s

Marketing Strategy #6. Be a Podcast host or guest

With our on-the-go lifestyles, the popularity of podcasting has grown exponentially over the last few years.

For a coaching business specifically, the platform allows you to connect with customers on a much deeper level as the listener can hear the passion in your voice and the emotion behind your words.

If that’s not your forte, having your own podcast is not a must. Instead, you could consider appearing as a guest on someone else’s and still reach a large audience and provide massive value from there.

guest podcasting Pro Tips:

• Before you even approach a podcaster, be sure to listen to at least 2-3 podcasts to get a good sense of their content and so you’re well prepared to participate.
• Only approach channels that have the same target audiences as you.
• Have a look through their reviews so you can get a good idea of what the listeners like (and don’t like) about the show.
• Get your tech sorted. Nothing worse than low-quality audio!

Marketing Strategy #7. Networking groups

Networking is another great way to gain more exposure, especially to your local area for in-person events.

You can try your local BNI chapter, local business chambers, or other business groups. Or, you can try social media groups to find other online communities.

Networking groups Pro Tips:

• Have a goal. What do you actually want to achieve by going? Don’t just go to these events because you have been told that you should. Set a purpose, so you remain focused on it, rather than just aimlessly wandering around.
• Have a solid elevator pitch prepared and ready before you go.
• Whilst many predominantly run an online coaching business, business cards are still handy for in-person events and make it easy to remember your name, website etc.
• Dress the part – you want to be comfortable but also give a good impression.
• Use your coaching skills! Listen and ask good questions.

Marketing Strategy #8. Email Marketing

Email is one of the most effective ways to reach out to potential clients and stay in touch with existing ones. It provides a great way for you to share content with your audience, build relationships, and promote your services to new and past clients alike.

Plus, it’s relatively easy to set up and manage as long as you invest in a reputable email management system, for example, MailChimp, Aweber or Klaviyo.

Email marketing Pro Tips:

• Create an opt-in list that allows people who visit your website to sign up for news about upcoming events or webinars. This gives them an opportunity to learn more about what you have going on without being pushy or spammy
• Send emails that contain valuable information that might interest readers who aren’t necessarily looking for coaching specifically but might still benefit by learning something new. This is a great way to build trust.
• Personalised emails (i.e. where you use their name within the content or subject line) have better opening and click rates. As do interactive emails, (e.g. including a video)
• Be realistic. Our inboxes are overflowing so don’t be discouraged if not everyone reads all of your newsletters. For example, according to 2022 statistics from Oberlo, the average open rate for a welcome email is only eight percent.

Marketing Strategy #9. Paid advertising

Paid ads are one of the most effective ways to gain more clients for your business and build your brand. Plus, you can decide upfront exactly how much you want to spend and you can refine the targeting options to very specific audiences.

So, if you’ve got a budget for it, here are some great places to start:

Google Adwords

We all know it and we all use Google. So it just makes sense that boosting your business on there has a strong chance of giving you a solid ROI.

There are multiple ad options to choose from including text, image, videos etc. plus multiple budget choices such as impressions versus clicks. Between that and what can be a very complicated-looking dashboard, this can be overwhelming for some.

So, if you do want to utilise this service, my advice is to first get yourself familiar with the foundations and basic terms. Then, set a small budget to begin with and use that as a low-risk, learning opportunity before diving in further.

If you’re new to Google AdWords, Neil Patel offers a great overview and step-by-step guide to help you get started. And, Google itself offers a very handy checklist to follow here.

Facebook

This social media giant is the largest so there’s already a lot of noise out there and it’s true, reach is getting harder and harder.

It is still a good option though in that it can work with any budget, targeting options can be as specific as you need, and the insights make it easy to refine and optimise your campaigns.

Instagram

With over 2 billion monthly active users Instagram is another great option to promote your business. Like Facebook, budget choices, targeting options and insights are very good.

For example, say you’re a health coach that works with Australian mums over 40 who want to lose weight. You can create a social media campaign that targets that specific demographic, and within a budget you choose.

You Tube

Did you know that YouTube is the second largest search engine?! As such it’s getting a tonne of traffic and it’s not all funny cat videos and such. A lot of users come to YouTube for a variety of purposes such as education, inspiration, and motivation… which is right up your alley!

Interested? Check out this video: YouTube Marketing in 2022: A Complete Beginner’s Guide

LinkedIn

Being a work-centric space, this is a haven of quality clients for business coaches and the like. It can be expensive, but if this is where the ideal customers for your niche are, then it should be a worthwhile investment.

Final thoughts: How to market your coaching business effectively

I hope this article has given you a good overview of the different ways that you can promote your coaching business effectively and attract more potential clients.

Remember:

• Each strategy could warrant an individual article on its own (e.g. for each social media platform), so this is really just a taster to give you inspiration, and motivation to get started.
• As you go through each strategy, think about how it might fit into your overall marketing plan. The idea is not to use all of them (that would be exhausting!), but to hone in on the activities that work best for your business and your ideal clients.
• I suggest starting with at least 3. Educate yourself on the foundational details and best practices and get in there and just start experimenting.

Finally, don’t be afraid to delegate! There are experts who specialise in every single advertising option mentioned above. By hiring a pro, not only will you get the most out of your investment, but your time and energy will be free to do what you do best… coaching!

Good luck!
Libby Hogan ?
Coaching Website Specialist at Rivmedia Web Design and;
Founder of Coach Connect Australia

The post How To Market Your Coaching Business: 9 Effective Strategies appeared first on Rivmedia Web Design.

Practical advice to stay competitive and get the most out of your digital marketing in 2021

No one can predict what is in store for the business world post-COVID-19. What we do know for sure is that when the pandemic forced everyone indoors, they turned to the internet to consume information and shop online, making digital marketing a top priority for all businesses.

With our ever-increasing busy lifestyles and the convenience the online world provides, this shift in habits is unlikely to go back to how it was before the pandemic, the consumer landscape has changed forever.

So, in order to stay competitive, businesses need to continue to evolve.

If you’re in the process of building or revitalising your digital marketing, here is some useful information and actionable steps to help you stay on track.

Smart digital marketing tips post-COVID

Today, there’s no telling when the post-COVID era will happen exactly. But what’s certain is that after the pandemic ends, businesses will continue to work on rebuilding themselves or may even need to start from scratch.

Brick-and-mortar industries might have to work harder to reach an ideal level of stability. However, the future seems brighter for online businesses, as more shoppers have been and will continue to make purchases online because it’s cheaper and more convenient — with or without a pandemic.

This means that when businesses and people recover from the effects of the pandemic, all your digital marketing efforts will continue to pay off and provide your business with that competitive edge.

But if you haven’t ramped up your digital marketing strategy before, now is a good time to start by implementing these tips:

1. Update your website.

Now is the time to do a site audit and see your website for what it is. Does it load slowly? Does it look old-fashioned? Is it functional, responsive, and user-friendly?

During your site audit, make sure you identify information, photos, and other media or content that require updating. Fix errors and take note of page loading times. Check out competitor websites to find out if there’s anything you’ve missed or information you should be providing but isn’t there.

Ensure your website is mobile-responsive and if it isn’t, brace yourself for the possibility of needing to build an entirely new website.

>> See our tips here to help you get the most out of your current website as well as questions to ask to determine if it’s time to re-develop.

2. Post content regularly on social media.

If you have social media accounts set up for your business, start using those to reach out and engage with your audience.

Social media is a great space to put the word out about your company, products, and services, even on a tight budget. There’s also plenty of content you can include in your social media calendar, including:

• Updates about your products/services, including launches
• Sale or discount promotions
• Photos or videos of your offerings
• Content that gives your audience an insider’s look into what goes on in your business
• Live selling or promotions
• Games, quizzes, surveys
• Content about or from your brand ambassadors
• Testimonials and reviews
• A featured employee of the month
• Corporate social responsibility events or programs
• Videos or images that resonate with or relate to your brand

>> Check out more awesome social media posts ideas by Sprout Social

3. Improve customer service.

There are plenty of opportunities to show your leads and customers you care by providing personalised and prompt customer service. This includes answering enquiries and replying to comments or reviews in a timely manner. Your staff needs to not only be able to address questions and comments but also be trained on how to respond properly to negative reviews and when to escalate certain complaints.

Customer service continues to make a big difference in how loyal consumers are to certain brands. By providing your customers seamless, professional customer service, the more loyal they’ll be and more likely to refer your business to their own network.

4. Optimise your consumer database.

In the course of conducting your business, you would have collected a number of email addresses, social media accounts, and mobile phone numbers. Use these to your advantage in creating integrated email and SMS blasts and social media campaigns.

You should also dig into your customer database and take time to get to know your buyer personas and who your customers really are. You can also tap into your leads and see if you can reconnect and engage with them so they turn into customers.

5. Outsource some of your digital marketing tasks.

If you have a small team or budget and do not have the expertise to handle digital marketing tasks, it might be time to look into outsourcing these to digital marketing experts. These include website development — which we can definitely help you with — plus website marketing, social media marketing, e-commerce store setup, and so on.

This way, you won’t need to hire full-time employees to perform these highly specialised functions. Instead, you’ll have access to the expertise you need for as long as you want, minus the big budget for salaries and benefits.

Business growth post-COVID

One of the biggest and hardest lessons companies worldwide have learned from the pandemic is that the most agile businesses that can easily adapt to changing times not only survive but also thrive amidst crises like COVID-19.

This business agility pertains to companies being able to work with an online business model — or, at the very least, having an online presence. So don’t get left behind.

For your web design or digital marketing needs, you can find plenty of info here on our website, or feel free to get in touch with us for a chat. We can work together to build or boost your digital presence and optimise your business growth.

Further Resources:

• Why is Responsive Design So Important? – Why does responsive design matter? Why do you need it? Get all your questions about website responsiveness answered here.
• Why Will the COVID-19 Crisis Boost Digital Marketing in the Future? – The coronavirus crisis may seem like a huge threat to businesses but digital marketing may in fact take a great leap forward as a result.
• Effects of Covid-19 on digital marketing – The pandemic has compelled businesses to transition online to showcase their products and services. This, in turn, has prompted brands to create content that is contextual and relevant in order to garner a larger mindshare from their customer base.

The post Post Covid-19: Now is the time you need to elevate your digital marketing appeared first on Rivmedia Web Design.

If you build it, they will come

After investing time and money into a website, there’s nothing more frustrating than low website traffic. In this article, we list the main factors that can affect site visits & what you can do to increase them.

So many times I see people who mistakenly think that just because they launch a website, site visitors will automatically come. Truth is, this is not Field of Dreams and just because you build it does not mean customers will magically appear, no matter how good your website is.

Think of it this way, if you held a party but didn’t send anyone an invite, how many people would even know about it, let alone turn up?

Beyond that, even if you are promoting your website gaining those clicks is getting harder and harder. It’s mandatory for practically all businesses to have a website now so the internet is heavily saturated with competition making it difficult to rank well and stand out from the crowd.

Factors that can affect website traffic & what you can do

Brand New?

If your website is brand new it won’t just appear in search engine results immediately. First, your site has to be submitted to search engines and then they need time to crawl your site and index it. Be patient and make sure everything is done on your end (site submission, sitemaps etc.) to help this process.

Hopefully, your web designer has already done this for you, but if not, here’s a great article to help you out: How to Submit Your Website to Search Engines.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

It goes without saying that having a quality website to begin with is an important factor but not just in how it looks, but in how it performs too. A lot of the factors covered below can be held under the umbrella of SEO and if you manage them all: Good SEO = better ranking = increased website traffic.

Your website has to be optimised to help get people to it in the first place. This is where in-site SEO comes in,  such as appropriate use of keywords, proper use of titles and meta descriptions, quality code, optimised images and so on.

This is such a large field it’s impossible to cover everything, so my advice on this point is to either ensure you find yourself a web developer that is proficient with it or be willing to invest a good deal of time in educating yourself about it.

Use social media

The impact of social media on website traffic is two-fold. Firstly, if you have reasonable engagement and social shares, these can help your Google ranking as well as expose you to a wider audience. Secondly, the posts themselves can drive traffic to your site via page links, blog posts etc.

Best of all, you can take advantage of all of this for free! Of course, you can use the paid facilities to boost things further, but if you’re sharing quality content you might not need to spend a cent.

If the thought of posting regularly on social media makes you cringe, there are a few options to consider. Firstly, there’s a huge market for social media managers out there, so if you have the budget, outsource it!

However, if you need to manage it yourself and posting regularly is too hard, aim for at least once a week or even once a fortnight… anything is better than nothing. There’s a range of scheduling tools that are available to help make this easier; Facebook, for example, has its own in-built scheduling tool and one of my personal favourite all-rounders is Later.

Don’t forget why you’re reading this article;
you want more website traffic and social media is an effective way of getting it.

Finally, choose your platforms wisely; you don’t have to be on all of them. For example, LinkedIn is effective for B2B companies, whereas creative businesses tend to have better engagement on Instagram & Pinterest.

Find out which ones are best for your industry and stick to them. Setting up a page isn’t enough, you need to be active on your accounts. So if time, motivation and/or budget are a problem, I suggest choosing 2 and doing those well.

Are you blogging?

Blogging can be time-consuming and at times tricky to come up with new content, but it’s a worthwhile exercise. By creating regular new content you can achieve the following;

• Provide helpful and/or engaging content that your readers will appreciate (which hopefully results in a share or purchase)
• It shows Google that your website (and business) is active and fresh thus helping your ranking (Google doesn’t favour stale websites)
• If you blog quality content, it too will rank well and drive more traffic to your site
• It also provides additional content you can share on social media.

Google Analytics

If you’re not utilising Google Analytics, you should be! It’s a great tool for understanding your site visitors and how they engage with your website. It provides insights into what you are doing well and what you can improve.

What works is always changing so this is an ongoing process and one you should get used to checking in on. It takes a while to build up enough data to start analysing it, but once your site has been up for at least a few months you can start experimenting and tweaking.

Poorly performing website

If a website takes too long to load, is difficult to navigate, confusing, unattractive, or just plain boring people can be pretty brutal and leave very quickly. This can affect what is called your “bounce rate.” A high bounce rate (where people leave your site quickly) can be interpreted by Google that your site is obviously of little value, which can lower your rankings.

If you have google analytics installed you can check a number of statistics including bounce rates to help you determine what changes you need to make to improve things.

Mobile-friendly & secure websites

With a huge number of website traffic coming from mobile phones, a responsive website is no longer optional but a must. If people can’t easily view and use your site on mobile, this too can affect your bounce rate which = lower ranking and less traffic.

Furthermore, the responsiveness of your site is a contributing factor to how Google ranks your site and you will be pushed lower than your competitor’s sites if you’re not meeting best practice guidelines. The same goes for sites that don’t have an SSL certificate (security for your website).

Here are a couple of related articles that explain the above in more detail:

Website not secure? – Here’s how to fix it
Is Your Website Mobile Friendly?

Keyword-focused content

Keywords are the terms and phrases that people enter into a search engine to find you online. So when writing your content you need to put yourself in your customer’s shoes, determine what they will search for and write your content accordingly. Doing this well will give you a better chance of your content showing up among the results.

At the same time, this has to be done the right way and if you go too far with it (this is called keyword stuffing) it can actually work against you and lower your rankings. A good rule of thumb is to keep keywords and SEO in mind, but write for your audience first and Google second.

Backlinks

No website was meant to be an island, but rather a part of a much larger interconnected “web” (www = world wide web). The number of backlinks your site has is an indication of its popularity and importance so to google these act as a thumbs-up so to speak because your content is obviously valuable if people are happy to link to it.

As with keywords, there are certain do’s and don’ts to avoid being penalised.

Do:

• Create great content that people want to link to
• Share on social media
• Comment on other websites/blogs with relevant content – but don’t spam!
• Guest post
• Ensure your backlinks are quality links
• Ask clients to link to your content

Don’t:

• Pay for backlinking schemes
• Send spammy emails asking for backlinks
• Inject links into other websites

Final Thoughts

As you can see there are a number of factors that affect the amount of website traffic your site can receive. A lot of these factors may require professional assistance such as SEO (both in-site and external), content creation, social media management and so on. However, with a little time and education, there’s a lot you can do yourself with little financial investment.

It’s also prudent to remember that this is an ongoing process that you have to be consistent with.

The post Why is my website traffic so low? (and what to do about it) appeared first on Rivmedia Web Design.

Negative Online Reviews and how to deal with them

It’s never pleasant receiving poor feedback but negative online reviews are not necessarily a bad thing & can actually be used to your advantage.

In this digital age, online reviews now play a huge role in influencing customer’s buying choices. According to a recent survey by Bright Local a whopping 84% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation (see full survey results here). With that in mind, I often hear concerns from new businesses about setting up social media accounts or listing their business on directory websites purely because of their fear of possibly receiving negative online reviews.

In my opinion, this is nothing to fear; not only do the benefits of online reviews far outweigh the risks but as strange as it may sound, receiving negative feedback is not necessarily a bad thing.

Negative Online Reviews can actually be used to your advantage for a number of reasons:

• You’re human and humans aren’t perfect so seeing the odd negative comment among your list of reviews can make them more authentic (and not just a heap of 5-star reviews submitted by your friends!)
• If other potential customers see that you are actively handling problems (and not ignoring unhappy customers) this is going to give them greater confidence in you.
• You may just receive some feedback that helps you to improve your products and/or services; contributing to the growth and ongoing success of your business.

How to Respond to Negative Online Reviews

Respond promptly, but take a deep breath first

People expect a quick response in the online world so you need to deal with this promptly, but at the same time when you are best equipped to do so. Understandably you might feel sad or angry after reading negative online reviews but the worst thing you can do is respond to them when you’re still upset. So go grab a coffee & some chocolate and deal with it after you’ve cooled down and have a clear head.

Be professional and understand the customer’s point of view

There’s nothing worse than reading a response to a negative review that is defensive, making excuses, or sometimes even rude; even if you disagree with their comments or if they are being unreasonable you need to be polite, professional and keep your personal thoughts to yourself. You need to try and understand why the customer has posted it and what their pain points are if you hope to have a successful outcome.

If the review is valid:

If they have a justifiable complaint, take responsibility for it and do what you must to address the situation. Most people understand that sometimes things just don’t go quite to plan, but if you take ownership of it and resolve the situation you’ll earn their respect and they may even change their review as a result. Furthermore, if other current or potential customers see this, it will give them greater confidence in your customer service.

If the review is unfair:

No matter what you do, there will be the odd occasion where someone just cannot be satisfied and may even be unreasonable. In these cases, again address the customer’s complaint and make it known what steps you have taken to resolve the issue. Even if they don’t change/remove their review, most people understand that some people just cannot be pleased, but if you at least demonstrate that you have tried everything to make a difficult customer happy, it’s only going to reflect positively on you.

Take it offline if necessary

If things don’t go quite to plan, it might be prudent to take the conversation offline. Provide them with your direct contact details so you can deal with it privately; any continual negative back-and-forth that is public won’t be helpful to anyone.

If it comes to it, ask for the review to be removed

If the review is intentionally malicious or breaks any rules (swearing, personal attacks, etc.) you can reach out to the site owner and ask for it to be removed. This can be a slow process sometimes or the site owner might disagree with you, so it’s always best to try everything else first and remember to keep your cool.

Learn and move forward

It’s never pleasant receiving a negative review but you can also turn it into a positive by learning something from it. As a result of the negative feedback you can:

• Address any flaws in your products and/or services that might have been previously overlooked
• Re-write some of your website copy or terms & conditions to give customers more accurate expectations
• Adjust some of your business practices to address the issues raised
• Learn how to avoid certain problems in the future or if they do arise, be able to deal with them appropriately

Final note: “How many people are completely successful in every department of life? Not one. The most successful people are the ones who learn from their mistakes and turn their failures into opportunities.” Zig Ziglar

More Helpful Links

Here are some related articles you might find useful:

• Online reviews – a guide for business & review platforms:
  This guide has been designed to help you ensure the integrity of reviews on your site or about your business…
• Local Consumer Review Survey:
  This survey explores how consumers read and use online reviews. The information contained in this survey helps businesses and digital marketing agencies qualify the value of consumer reviews and how reviews impact consumers’ opinions and actions when searching for local businesses…
• Google+ It’s more important than you think:
  We all know that reviews play a huge role in online marketing and influencing a customer’s buying choices. As Google is by far the most popular search engine, having reviews on there is super important!…

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Google My Business It’s more important than you think

As Google is by far the most popular search engine, maximising your presence on there is vital to any business. How you set-up & use your Google My Business profile is more important than most people realise.

Google My Business – Who uses that?

Launched with a heap of buzz back in 2011 Google My Business was supposed to be the next BIG thing when it comes to social media platforms, but the platform never really seemed to take off.

However, for business owners, the fact that Google My Business for personal users is somewhat of a ghost town is irrelevant, it’s still really important to set up your local business listing; here are the main reasons why:

1. Google Places – When people are searching for local businesses, the google places results will always show up first before the organic ones, so you want to be included in that list! To be in the list you first need to make sure your location and business categories are set up correctly so particular searches will show your page. Where you rank in the results depends on a few factors such as the information you provide, reviews, and so on.
2. User Experience – When someone searches for your business specifically, they get to see your Google My Business profile result giving them quick and easy access to your basic contact details, opening hours, link to your website, and online reviews which is really handy.
3. Ranking – If you want to succeed online, everyone knows that a good google ranking is very important, and listing your business with google can help contribute towards a higher ranking.

Setting up a Google My Business page is pretty quick and easy to do, simply Click here to Claim Your Google My Business Business Page and follow the instructions from there, and remember as discussed in a previous article, if you work from home you can hide your residential address from public view and just display your suburb – see the info for that here: New Website – Now What?

Once that’s done you can just leave it at that if you wish, or you could go one step further and share a few things on there as well. Google My Business was built for SEO (i.e. showing up in search engine results) so anything that you share there has a good chance of showing up which is just another helpful way to drive traffic to your site… and it’s free, so why not?!

But wait, there’s more – Google Reviews!

We all know that reviews play a huge role in online marketing and influencing a customer’s buying choices. Recent figures show that around 90% of customers will research products or businesses online and often will trust online reviews more than personal recommendations from friends or family. As google is by far the most popular search engine, having reviews on there is super important!

When potential customers see you in local google places search results, as mentioned they are always displayed first and will show how many reviews you have and your average star rating (if you have 5 or more).

Even if you have tonnes of reviews elsewhere (such as Facebook or Yelp) if you don’t have any on google, in these local results it looks like you have none, and if your competitors do, users might be more inclined to check them out instead.

So how do you get Google Reviews?

To leave a review, customers must have some sort of account with google, such as Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive, etc. If they don’t have one of these, they will need to create one before proceeding; it’s quick and easy so hopefully, this won’t turn them off continuing.

How to make getting Google reviews a little easier…

The easier you can make it for your customers, the better chance you have of getting them to leave you a review.

So rather than have them search for your business first an even better way is to simply provide your clients with a direct link to your review form; then all they have to do is click on it!

Google doesn’t make this easy though (annoying right!?). There are a few steps you have to take in order to get this direct link and to make sure it works both on desktop and mobile, but as this method is by far the quickest and easiest, it’s definitely worth doing.

So how do you get this direct link? Well here’s where I bribe you:

If you’re already a customer of ours, hopefully, you are thrilled with what we have done for you, or perhaps you discovered us through this article section of our website and have found it useful?

If so, one of the kindest compliments we can receive from you is… yep you guessed it – a review!

And as a thank you for leaving us one, I would be happy to provide you with the direct link to your own review page (like mine below) so you too can quickly and easily ask your own customers for reviews. Just shoot me an email and I’ll hook you up!

>> Click here to leave Rivmedia Web Design a review on Google! <<<

Thanks in advance, we really appreciate you taking the time to help us grow our online reputation and I hope this article helps you do the same!

More Helpful Links

Here are some related articles you might find useful:

• 7 Reasons Why You Should Be Using Google+ For Your Business:
  Even if you have heard about Google+, you may be asking yourself what the point is of investing time and money into another social network, especially when sometimes it seems…
• Beyond Social: The Benefits To Google+ For Business:
  People outside the industry tend to think it’s just another social network (and one that no one is using). The truth is, whether the network is popular or not, Google loves it when you play in their sandbox.
• Google+: Do’s and Don’ts for Small Businesses:
  The jury may still be out on the value of Google+ for personal users, but for small businesses, Google+ can’t be ignored. Google+ isn’t just another social network a small business can use to boost its online presence, but it’s also the ultimate resource to maximize visibility on Google search pages…

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New website. Now what?

So you’ve got yourself a brand new website, or perhaps you’ve had one for a while now but not much is happening?

The Internet is one of the easiest methods of connecting with your target group of customers and is the method through which many of your potential and future customers will do their research on you. However, a website is not a magic wand that will instantly create business and sales. You have to work at it, build onto it, promote it, and work to increase its ranking in the Google search system.

Having a well-designed website (both in appearance and functionality) used to be enough on its own to get top ranking websites but over the years google algorithms have changed, become more sophisticated and a lot more demanding. So be prepared to be patient, especially if you have lots of competition as climbing up the google ranks can take time, from weeks to months, even longer depending on your niche.

Here are some steps to help you climb the google ladder:

1. Build Your SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the way in which online search engines such as Google decide what sites to show people when they search for something on the Internet. As your website is already complete I won’t discuss on-page SEO but there are things you can do to help improve your website’s online presence.

Backlinks – You must add relevant links back to your page throughout the web; these are called “backlinks.”

“www” stands for World Wide Web – Web being the operative word. No website was meant to be an island, but rather a part of a much larger interconnected “web” which is why google favours sites that advocate this. Plus, the number of backlinks your site has is an indication of its popularity and importance. Think about it, if another website links to you they obviously see your site as valuable and relevant, so google will recognise that also. Keep in mind, that backlinks need to be quality backlinks, that is, they are relevant and from reputable websites themselves. So don’t fall for shoddy backlink campaigns or link exchange scams! – Poor quality backlinks can actually do more harm than good, so be selective!

Where can you get backlinks from?

• Guest posts – A common method for getting backlinks is by writing guests posts on other reputable websites in your niche. This method has been quite abused of late but done correctly can give your site a boost, as well as make you an authority in your niche and hopefully get targeted referral traffic too. Here’s a fantastic article on writing guests posts to help guide you – The Definitive Guide to Guest Blogging by Brian Dean
• Directories – There are heaps that are available that have both free and paid options but these are to be used with caution; like backlinks from poorly ranked sites, directory listings can sometimes be harmful too so try to stick to those that are well known with good page ranks. You also need to check if these links from directories (and all websites) are actually counted too as some add what is called a no-follow link which means google doesn’t even count it as a backlink. If you can find locally based directories obviously that’s a big bonus too. You could also consider local business chambers, council business directories, and so on.
• Provide Testimonials – All businesses love displaying testimonials on their website and will often include a link to the provider’s website to prove that it is genuine, so take the time to write some. In doing so they will probably write a testimonial for you in return also which has extra valuable benefits in itself!
• Blog Reviews – Find quality blogs within your niche and contact them about what product or service you provide. Offer them a freebie product or service in exchange for a mention on their blog or better still, perhaps even writing a review about it. Don’t just straight out ask for a link though as that’s spammy and could violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
• Google My Business Profile – You’ll need a Google My Business profile to set up your Google My Business business page (I will discuss further down) so it’s worth setting one up. Within the about section of your profile you can write about yourself and what you do… and guess what, include links to your website!

There are a lot more methods you can use to get backlinks but personally I find the above the quickest and simplest, so get on it!

2. Get your Social Media Sorted

Social media activity can be used as an indicator to search engines for a website’s credibility and popularity, as well as help determine which sites are relevant based on the given keyword search. That combined with the popularity of social media sites these days highlights the importance of having a social media presence. Which platforms (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.) you use will depend on your business type, but Google My Business is one I would strongly recommend.

Google My Business may not be as popular as other social media platforms, however having a Google My Business page will help your google ranking and is a lot more important than most people realise. I have another article which discusses Google My Business and it’s importance here, but in the meantime here are some quick steps to get you started:

If you don’t have a physical location (i.e. you work from home or just operate online) you can still claim a page and simply select “I deliver goods and services to my customers at their location.” You will still need to fill in your address, but only your suburb will be displayed to the public. Do this as soon as you can as Google will actually send you a validation code via snail mail to verify your business and this can take a couple of weeks.

Click here to Claim Your Google My Business Business Page

3. Ask for Reviews

An online review is equally important as a personal recommendation these days and when people are looking for information about your business, finding reviews can not only be a great marketing tool but it can help boost your SEO as well. The more online content that is written about your business, the more relevant it will appear to search engines, so don’t be shy about asking for reviews!

4. Google Adwords

AdWords is the name of Google’s advertising platform. In general, most people will click on the organic results over paid results, and running an AdWords campaign won’t boost your online rankings.

However, if you have room in your budget, AdWords can be a helpful option to use, particularly in the early stages of your website’s launch. Firstly, it can help drive traffic to your site that you might not have had if your page isn’t ranking well yet. And second, it helps build your brand because even if someone doesn’t click on an Ad, they may see it and remember you next time they search for your particular product or service.

You can also completely control your budget with Adwords, by setting a limit to your daily spend and then adjusting as you go.

When Can You Begin to See Results?

Again, be patient. Climbing up the google ladder takes time. Follow the above steps, build your presence on social media and keep an eye on how people interact with your website, and make changes as necessary.

Good luck!

Helpful Links

Here are some related articles you might find useful:

• Backlinko – The Definitive Guide to Guest Blogging by Brian Dean
• Smart Passive Income – Your Website Is Up—Now What? 5 Things You Can Do To Market and Promote Your Website
• Search Engine Watch – 30 Free Ways To Market Your Small Business Site
• Forbes – 10 Proven Ways To Market Your Website

Still need help with your new website?

Rivmedia Web Design specialises in creating and maintaining high-quality, purpose-driven websites that convert visitors into customers. Get in touch with us today and let’s chat about how you can get the most out of your website.

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