1. Meta descriptions matter
Meta descriptions are what appear under the title of the page when your website shows in search results. These are massive deciding factors when it comes to click-through rates. If your meta description is too short, google doesn’t like it. If it is too long, google doesn't like it. If it is too ‘click-baity’ your customers will avoid it. If you are not ‘clickbaity’ enough, you will get scrolled past. Sounds easy, right? I used systems like Semrush and Ahrefs to get them to a place where I felt comfortable. The long and short of it is that you need to care about your meta descriptions like you would care about your first impression because they are.
2. Make sure people know what you do.
This is the number 1 most common thing I run into when I help a business, in fact I have seen it from both junior and senior companies. It is easy to get lost in the features and forget to mention what you do, but I need it to be SUPER clear what you do EXACTLY because if there is any confusion, I am not clicking. Especially because the average website retention time is under 1 minute, you need to grab me fast. Anything less than 3 seconds, and Google considered that as a negative visit to your site.
3. Social media marketing using locations is a targeting goldmine
I sell to countries overseas, and social media loves pushing videos to those places closest to you. I have found that by changing the location for the country you are targeting you will get a stronger response. I love to make videos that are country and even city-specific.
4. Analyzing your competition matters
The fastest way to get a good handle on the best advertising is to see what your competition is doing and you can either copy their style to compete for market share or go in an opposite direction - easier to be a bright star in a dark sky I always say. I use my competition to find keywords and search terms that you can benefit from when growing your site. SemRush is also a great place to pull these. I know there are analytics tools to find out exactly what your competitors are using, but I try to keep my advice to free options.
5. Consistency is key.
Your brand as you grow is something that I need to “bump into” multiple times, it's a touch point, and free advertising. The problem is that I often see brand names differently on multiple platforms. If they are an independent consultant, I see headshots that are vastly different from platform to platform. Even if you are not in love with your branding, it is important to keep it consistent so touch points all tie together instead of working independently.
6. No random acts of marketing!
Your outbound strategy needs to have a point. I tend to lump mine into three categories now, do I want to 1. Educate. 2. Get a reaction. 3. Create an action. This will give you direction and help focus your energy on things that grow your business, not get distracted with busy work. A good piece of content posted infrequently is stronger than something with no direction posted consistently.
7. Reward and praise every single customer.
Your customers, including your current conversations, are your biggest advocates, reward them as much as possible. A soft introduction to another business increases your chance of closing by 10x, so if you love your customers and want them to talk about you, start treating them like royalty. I happen to love my job, so getting jazzed about my current projects is easy, but I often forget to tell my customers they are doing a good job. Shoutout to selftalk.space , Merca Applied Sciences Inc, Advertbi, CTRL + ALT DESIGN LLC, Dismantly (Previously Genius Autos)
8. Trust the experts you know
I am not a web designer, and I do not claim to be one, I work with words and messaging. This means it is often that I reach out to connections I have for insight. Asking for the advice is not the hard part. The hard part is trusting them and implementing it. This was a challenge for me because I tend to be a bit of a control freak, but I am learning. Kayla Ren Immel & Richmond Taylor
9. Not all advice is good advice.
In the same breath as telling you to trust the experts you know, I want to highlight that not all advice is good advice. Trust your gut. If you feel like the person giving you advice is not listening, does not understand, or is just giving unsolicited advice, you are 100% allowed to ignore it. In fact I had to start a list of advice I was being given and organize it by week, some advice was counterintuitive to other advice. I ended up having to test and tune - adjust as I go.
10. Being a bright star in a dark sky
I touched on this earlier. Tech is a very loud space right now, and shouting over the noise is tough. Make sure to consider differentiating yourself. As an example, I was working with the flop podcast, and during a brainstorming session between Wes Rissell and myself we were having trouble getting above the noise because the name was similar to other endeavors going on with similar names. A simple brainstorming session led us to realize that ‘the flop podcast’ shortened can be ‘the flop pod’ and nobody had control of the SEO for the word “floppod” because it is not a word. This differentiated them on Google results and only took a two-second explanation at the end of the pod to drive traffic in that direction.
Cheers
-Zach
"10 things I learned starting a business "
Comments