Blog
Shifting From SEO to an Omnichannel Strategy
August 12, 2024
Making an Impact Where It Counts
Remember the early days of search engine-based strategies? This was like the “Wild West” of Google, where a perfectly articulated set of keywords and blogs could set you up for a powerful position on the most used search engine in the world. But things are a lot different now and the conventional wisdom of search engine optimization has changed, slowly but surely.
Now, newer and more creative marketing teams are beginning to explore other avenues of success. iMarket Solutions has begun using a new set of strategies like the omnichannel marketing approach. Just remember that as things change, so must our marketing strategies to ensure more customers find the products and services they need. And our new omnichannel approach is designed to do just that.
How SEO Began
SEO, or search engine optimization, involves optimizing the content and programming of a company’s website so that it appears in the top Google search results when potential customers search for products and services they need. For many years, this was clearly the simplest and most direct way to get more clicks, customers, and business for your company from an online perspective. Other names for this kind of strategy include keyword marketing and organic search since it uses strategies to harness the Google algorithm rather than paying for Google ads.
While SEO still plays a vital role in ensuring your company’s visibility and authority through Google, things have definitely changed. Over the years, the digital world has become more complicated and diversified, as customers spend more time in different online spaces, not just searching on Google. SEO alone is no longer a sufficient strategy to carry a business to success.
Introducing the Omni-Channel Approach
So, if we’re still using SEO but it’s not as powerful as a stand alone strategy–what is? We’d like to introduce you to the omnichannel marketing approach which uses many different marketing channels to extend your company’s reach and provide services for customers that might have been missed with an SEO-only strategy.
An omnichannel strategy mixes classic SEO and content marketing with emails, social media campaigns, postcards, and TV ads. This combination of different marketing channels allows your company to “meet people where they are” and coordinate around a single set of themes, whether they be a new product to sell or a seasonal service.
The Power of the Marketing Calendar
Calendars aren’t particularly new or innovative in our industry, but they’re extremely powerful when they’re used by the right people. A marketing calendar is the main coordination tool when taking an omnichannel approach to your marketing. This is where the central theme begins permeating through your marketing channels.
Think of it this way–your marketing calendar decides what you’d like to advertise to your customers. Perhaps it’s a new service or a competitive limited time offer. Your marketing calendar will specifically mention this new promotion, and teams using different marketing strategies (social media, email, blogging, local postcards, YouTube ads, and more) will coordinate using the same message. This strategy is potent and maximizes the reach of your company with a clear message that is easy for customers to understand.
The Benefits of an Omni-Channel Approach
It’s become clear that multi-channel marketing is better than SEO alone because it can put your company’s message out on many different digital platforms. But omnichannel marketing is a huge leap ahead of multi-channel marketing.
With multi-channel marketing, platforms and marketing methods are used independently of one another. But with omnichannel marketing, we leverage your company’s marketing dollars by tying the strategy together with a marketing calendar and consumer data from many different channels. Omni-channel marketing represents a coordinated, data-driven approach that can supercharge your marketing dollars by getting more for less.
Leveraging the “Rule of Seven”
The “rule of seven” is a fundamental, time-proven marketing principle which states: a prospect needs to see your brand an average of seven times in order for your company to become top of mind. This is also known as the “effective frequency.” This is the basis behind why multi-channel marketing was such a big improvement from SEO-only marketing.
Now, with the help of trackable data and various digital platforms, our omnichannel approach puts the rule of seven into overdrive. Instead of showing repetitive advertising to customers, we can expose them to your brand with fresh, engaging, and new content that surfaces in multiple places. And using a marketing calendar, we aim to reach them at the perfect time with the right service.
Main Takeaways
SEO still serves as a backbone to any comprehensive marketing strategy. But it’s time to take things further with an omnichannel marketing approach which offers brand awareness, consistent customer experience, engagement, acquisition, and adaptability. Simply put–with an omnichannel approach, we can meet your customers where they are.
Customer expectations are ever-evolving, and the omnichannel approach is our way of helping the home services industry thrive in a digital landscape. Brand awareness is key and showing up on multiple platforms in a coordinated way is an essential part of reaching this goal. By using this strategy, our clients will see improved business growth and more profitability as a direct result.
Interested in learning more about our omnichannel approach and what this looks like for your business? Book a discovery call today.
