There is no denying that the 2020 covid-19 pandemic had detrimental effects on businesses across the nation. In fact, CNBC states that a shocking 60% of small businesses closed down permanently as a direct result of the pandemic impacts. Even more, those that successfully weathered the year-long storm are now frantically recalibrating their growth/marketing strategies to align with the shifted post-covid world to avoid shutting their doors for good as well.
There are various innovative ways a business leader can go about this process to position them for future success. But the one concept that should be applied to all business industries to solidify growth is leveraging the power of local SEO and data experience to drive in-store conversions.
The Potential of Adopting Online Best Practices
Utilizing local SEO, online appointment bookings, and event pages to drive leads is not something new to the digital landscape. The world has been migrating to a predominantly digital way of operating for the last couple of decades, making this effort one that should be integrated regardless of external, uncontrollable factors. Nonetheless, between the stay-at-home orders and CDC social distancing guidelines, it took a toll on organic in-store conversions, making this digital aspect of business an even more essential one.
Why? Because SEO and multi-channel customer experience optimization are significant (and potentially lucrative) ways to remind your pandemic-shook customers that you are still around, what you have to offer, and enables you to expand your target market to achieve bottom-line growth while effectively optimizing traffic. When done strategically and mindfully, you will quickly translate online traffic into in-store conversions and new leads.
Fun Fact - According to HubSpot, 88% of consumers who search for local resources online tend to visit or call one of the searched businesses within the same day.
How to Get Started
The 'why' may be great, but the 'how' is just as vital to your success. With that being said, there are several underpinning ways you can optimize your business online. Concerning SEO, relevance is the most important part here, meaning your keywords, content, and phrases should all be aligned to what your business offers and stands for. For example, if you own a clothing store, you will want to use SEO keywords that reflect that so your store will show up towards the top in search results. Other critical aspects to advance this leg of your business include:
- - Doing a deep-dive analysis of your audience and the type of things they search for online within your industry.
- - Improving your website speed and performance, including making it mobile-friendly, if not already, to make lead and in-store conversions more likely.
- - Ensuring you have an updated contact page that will help identify you.
- - Integrating an event page that showcases promotional deals, discounts, etc., to inspire customers to come in-store.
- - Networking on social media platforms/using paid social media ads to drive website and in-store traffic.
Work Smarter, Not Harder
Incorporating local SEO best practices and taking advantage of digital resources such as event pages to drive in-store conversions is a fundamental part of operating any sized business. As for small businesses that are still standing after facing monumental hardships from pandemic pressures, this effort especially holds true to reverse the branding/financial burdens that likely surfaced over the past year.
Overall, the nation may be creeping back to a state of normalcy, but societal expectations have certainly repositioned to a digital first angle. The best part is that this shift is something that you can learn to capitalize on to not only get back to a balanced business state, but achieve new levels of business growth.
Brickwork software allows leading enterprise retailers to win up to 70% more online traffic intending to shop in stores and activate that traffic into online-to-offline conversion funnels that lead directly into local stores and revenue increases up to 5x in-store averages.
Contact us today to begin winning your omni-channel data experience.