Digital marketing is using the Internet to improve sales and bring in more customers. Digital marketing encompasses many strategies, such as local search marketing, review marketing and online reputation management, paid advertising, social media and much more to build an online presence that makes it easy for customers to find, engage with and choose your business.

Local search marketing is a form of local SEO designed to optimize your local business’s online presence and improve or maintain your local search ranking.

As you can see in this image, when customers search for your products and services in your location, what’s called the “local pack” shows up on their mobile device, tablet or desktop computer.

Those few results that show in the first page of the local pack largely determine which business customers will choose.

That’s why local search marketing is so important. It improves your online presence and boosts your local ranking, helping your business show up in that local pack so that customers find and choose your business.

Here are just a few things involved in local search marketing:

• Directory claiming and optimization
• Ongoing presence management
• Claiming and optimizing your Google My Business Profile
• Optimizing your social media profiles for local searches
• Verifying your address and ensuring your business’s address is accurate and consistent across the most important directories

Who needs local search marketing?

Businesses with a brick and mortar presence can benefit from local search marketing as it helps customers find you locally.

Local search is also important for businesses targeting a specific service area or radius as you can set your information in Google to target a specific radius while hiding your home address, if applicable.

Review marketing is a form of online reputation management in which your business works to get new positive reviews while managing neutral and negative reviews.

Most websites that allow customers to review your business operate on a five-star rating scale. This means that customers can typically give you a rating from 0-5 stars.

Here’s how we define negative, neutral and positive reviews based on a five-star rating scale:

• 0-2 stars = negative review
• 3 stars = neutral review
• 4-5 stars = positive review

Because star rating is the most important part of an online review for most consumers, businesses should work to obtain or maintain a five-star rating, but it’s a lot of hard work.

Here are a few ways Renown, our reputation management platform, helps businesses like yours generate new positive reviews:

• Gathering customer emails or phone numbers with our check-in feature
• Sending out a specific number of emails each month rather than all at once to try to consistently get new reviews over time—rather than getting a lot at once and then none for a long time
• Filtering out negative reviews by asking unhappy customers for private feedback
• Sending you instant email or text message alerts when a new review comes in so that you can respond and manage any negatives that make it through the filter

Why is review marketing important?

Review marketing and online reputation management are important for a few things:

• Many consumers base purchase decisions on review star rating
• A large percentage of customers will turn to your competition if you have too many negative reviews
• Most customers will return to your business after a negative experience if you respond to their negative review and try to make things right
• Reviews can help improve your local search ranking

Who needs review marketing?

All businesses need review marketing. Whether you’re a restaurant, roofing contractor, retail store, eCommerce business or anything in between. Everyone wants to read reviews of your business, product or services.

Why are some of my reviews filtered?

Some review platforms filter certain reviews that don’t meet their criteria for one reason or another.

Here are a few reasons reviews might get filtered:

• The reviewer has never posted another review before
• The review is too positive or too negative, making it seem like spam
• The review isn’t useful – some platforms allow users to up-vote or down-vote your reviews if they aren’t funny or useful
• The review has been flagged for removal because someone thought it was fake

Often, there’s nothing you can do about these filtered reviews besides contacting the website’s support team. You can, however work to consistently get new positive reviews on the platform so that when one of your good reviews is filtered, it doesn’t seem like such a huge hit to your business’s online reputation.

Can I get a negative review taken down?

Sometimes you’ll get a negative or fake review and want it taken down. Let’s start with negative reviews.

You probably can’t (and shouldn’t) get your negative reviews taken down. Negative reviews can be bad for your online reputation, but you can use those bad reviews as a good opportunity.

Here’s what to do to turn your negative online reviews into a positive experience:

• Reply to all negative reviews and try to make things right for the reviewer
• Work to get new positive reviews that bury the negative
• Remember that some customers actually want to see a couple of negative reviews because it shows that your reviews aren’t fake or paid for
• Use the negative feedback to improve the customer experience at your business

Paid advertising is the act of paying for the placement of your business’s ads in search results, on social media or on other websites.

We break paid advertising into three categories: creating demand, meeting demand and retargeting ads.

Meeting Demand

Ads that meet demand target local consumers who are looking for similar businesses, products or services. The types of ads that fall into this category are Google and Bing search ads.

Creating Demand

Paid ads that create demand target people where they spend most of their time: social media. The types of ads that fall into this category are Facebook and Instagram ads.

Retargeting Ads

Retargeting ads are ads that target consumers who have already expressed interest in your business. They’ve visited your website or given you their email address. Retargeting ads can show in search results, on social media or on other websites.

Paying for Online Ads

Ads can also be broken into categories based on how you pay for them.

These are a few types of ads based on how you pay:

• Pay per click ads – you only pay when someone clicks on your ad
• Pay per impression ads – you pay each time someone sees your ad

Who needs paid advertising?

Paid advertising is great for a wide range of local businesses.

You could use paid advertising if:

• You’re working on building your local search presence and don’t want to wait to show up in search results
• You want to use retargeting to bring back lost leads
• Your business is in a competitive industry or location
• You want to target a specific service area or radius that you can’t reach with local search marketing

Social media marketing is using social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter to reach more of your target market.

Here are some of the elements of social media marketing:

• Profile optimization
• Social media posting
• Replying to messages
• Replying to comments on posts
• Interacting with customers and other business pages

Our social media services include

• Creating a unique brand profile tailored to your business’s goals and voice
• Publishing up to 3 posts a week, featuring custom texts and graphics
• Tailoring each post to each platform: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram

Please contact your local digital marketing consultant to schedule an in-person meeting or send us an email to sign up for our digital marketing services!

How much do your digital marketing services cost?

We have several different plans that we can combine to help your business reach more customers online. All plans are affordable and contract free. See all of our digital marketing services for more information on each service and its pricing.

SEO stands for “search engine optimization” and it means improving your business’s website or microsite in a way that helps search engines like Google understand what your business is, where you’re located and much more.

SEO involves:

• Keyword research and placement
• Adding metadata in specific areas of your website
• Optimizing on-site content

What is local SEO?

Local SEO is a form of SEO and a subset of digital marketing that involves:

• Creating, claiming and optimizing online directory listings
• Ensuring your information is correct and accurate across websites
• Ongoing presence management

Local SEO is a great way to help improve your online presence and your local search ranking so that customers find your business when they are searching for similar products and services.

Learn more about SEO and Local SEO.

A landing page is a web page that is usually separate from your website and is designed to be where consumers land after they click on your ad.

Good landing pages match the messaging in your ad and make it easy for your audience to take an action such as calling you, downloading coupon, getting directions to your business or filling out a form.