1. Use referral emails

2. Highlight good reviews 

3. Allow customers to send a text message inquiry

4. Have multiple ways to contact you (chat bots, website, phone number, & social media) 

5. Run a paid search ad or Google Ad

6. Update Google My Business Profile 

7.  Attend a tradeshow or local fair

8. Sponsor a team, organization, or charity 

9. Run a new paid social campaign 

10. Build an email list through company blog, newsletter, & coupon codes

11. Use QR codes on business cards & social posts 

12. Refer customers to complementary businesses 

13. Join a networking group

14. Participate in local community events & gatherings

Start a user-researched web project today? Call 248.528.3600

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According to Google’s marketing retail guide, 40% of U.S. holiday shoppers say their holiday shopping experience has made them consider shopping much earlier for other milestones this year. This means your holiday gifts offers, specials, and other deals should be ready a couple months in advance. With consumers combining online and in-store shopping, preparing an omnichannel holiday strategy early will be critical to reaching shoppers along their purchase journeys. Have both your supply chain and digital marketing plan ready before November. 

If fact, it might be best to have new strategy right after the current holiday ends. According to the guide, June 2021 reported 31% of U.S. shoppers had already started their holiday shopping and 37% of shoppers who shopped the previous holiday season wished they had started earlier. During COVID-19 and currently, a lot of business’s supply chains had stock issues, causing over 50% of U.S. shoppers surveyed to say that they would start holiday shopping earlier to avoid an item being out of stock. This is especially important if you are an ecommerce business or a product-based company. Several suggestions from Google to include in a marketing strategy are:

• Use the Insights page in Google Ads and best sellers report to keep up with consumer demand. 
• Notify customers with promotions, sales, free and fast shipping options, and return and refund options directly to your product listings.
• Create a Business Profile and run a Local campaign to connect with local shoppers. 

If you are struggling with any of these items Miller Media can help with Google Ads and provides Google Analytics Consulting to create a marketing strategy that is successful. 

Multichannel Shopping is the Main Way People Shop

Omnichannel or multichannel shopping has led to only 4% of U.S. holiday shoppers not using digital channels for their shopping according to the retail guide. This means have a digital presence is a requirement for your business. Have a website, create social media accounts, and GoogleMyBusiness Profile for your business. If you are missing one or more of these avenues and can’t manage them yourself a digital marketing agency can help you. Also, convenience is key for people around the holidays. Minimize stress for last-minute shoppers, who rely on local and nearby stores. In Google Maps, searches for “gift shops near me” have grown globally by over 60% year over year. Make sure your on-page and off-page SEO is effective, so new or returning customers will see you first on Google’s results page. Other ways Google suggests helping shoppers see your business is with: 

• A Performance Max campaign, and through your app (if you have one) by deep linking to reach the right customers. 
• Smart Bidding for store visits or store sales. 
• Listing your products for free across Google Shopping 
• Local inventory ads and adding  Pointy  to your Business Profile to reach nearby customers by promoting available inventory. 

People Use Google for Holiday Inspiration

Google states that 43% of U.S. holiday shoppers that used Google said they did so to get gift ideas, and 64% said they did so for discovery and inspiration. This is very important for retailers. Search visibility is critical to capturing these shoppers. Include gift guides in your company’s blog. In addition, promote your products to your target audience at the right time across Google surfaces, like Search, YouTube, Gmail, and the Shopping tab. This takes SEO, website optimization, PPC, Google Ad creation, social media marketing, and other digital marketing services. All this can be overwhelming to maintain. If you are struggling to market your business while trying to run it, let the team here at Miller Media do it for you. 

Need help preparing for future holiday marketing strategies? Call 248.528.3600.

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1. Add Internal Links to Your Holiday Pages 

PageRank is a Google ranking factor. It is important to add links from relevant pages or websites on your website to boost your ranking on SERPs. It is also important to audit your website so that you can fix broken links or redirects. One way to include internal links organically is to include a shopping guide in your company’s blog. You can include links to sales pages and links competitor sites for price comparing. 

2. Discover Seasonal Topics

Search for holiday-specific keywords that you can include in your content for your landing pages. Keywords relevant to a holiday don’t have to include the actual name of the holiday. It can be related to the person whom people are buying for like “for dad” and “for mom.” Think about all the people your target audience may need to buy for and search for keyword those demographics may be interested in. Once you have a good list, include your keywords into headings, body copy, and meta descriptions. 

3. Update Old Seasonal Content

If you are short on time, simply update old landing pages and content. Most of the holidays stay on the same day every year, so you can pre-schedule content updates on your website and social media. Keeping seasonal pages active all year round could also help build authority for those pages which will help rank on Google. When the holiday nears, go through your content, and update new item suggestions, recommendations, and photos with new meta descriptions and alt tags. 

4. Optimize Your Google Business Profile 

This is especially important if you have a brick-and-mortar business. If you haven’t already claimed your Google Business Profile, do so. When consumers type in “______ near me”, you have a higher chance of showing up in Google Maps. Optimize everything and add your holiday hours. Share updates, offers, and events related to your business. They will appear in a carousel near the bottom of your Google Business panel. Use this to share any deals and offers for the upcoming holiday season. Here are more tips for posting straight from Google. 

5. Use Free Product Listings on Google Shopping 

Google Shopping brings in 1.2 billion monthly searches. If you are an ecommerce business, you will want to have items from your product pages listed here. To show your products in Google Shopping’s organic listings, you will need to have a Google Merchant Center account. This will help bring traffic to your product pages by showing your listing to places like Google Search, Maps, YouTube, Shopping Tab, and Images. 

6. Improve CTRs for Holiday Pages 

Higher click-through-rates means more visitors and more sales. Make sure your holiday images have optimized alt tags and meta descriptions. On you holiday pages optimize your titles with keywords and calls-to-action. Include interactive elements and videos on your landing page to increase viewer retention. Then, utilize Google Ads in combination with your landing pages. Google Ads will give you click data on what title and meta description combinations work best for a particular page.      

Improve your website’s SEO for the holidays today. Call 248.528.3600.

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How do I create a Google Business Profile? 

You can create your profile through Google Search and Maps. First, sign into your business’s Google Account. Then go to “create a profile”. Next up, you enter the name of your business or select your business from the list of suggested businesses as you type. After that search for your business category. Once that is done, click “Next” and enter whether you have a location customers can visit. Follow that task up with entering the service area of your business, phone number, and website URL. After that you should be finished and all that is left is to choose a verification option. For more details visit Google’s Support Page or contact us, we’d be happy to help in addition to any Google related services. 

Bonuses to Have that Help Your Business  

Google Business Profile lets you select various attributes to let customers know special details about your business. These attributes also appear on your products in the Shopping tab when you add then to your Merchant Center account. Examples of attributes are women led business, black-owned business, LGBTQ+ friendly, etc. 

Performance Max campaigns help bring buyers to your stores by promoting your locations to shoppers when they are browsing on Google Maps, Search, YouTube, and the Google Display Network. This advertising strategy formally known as local campaign can help drive foot traffic by sharing store openings, special in-store promotions, updated business hours, and specific products that are available in nearby stores. Pair this with local inventory ads. Local inventory ads let potential clients know whether the products they’re looking for are available before coming into stores. You can showcase products that are available in your nearby stores on Google Search and highlight your fulfillment options like curbside pickup, pickup today, and pickup later. 

Measuring the impact your online ads can be done with Google’s Smart Bidding. This part of measuring in-store visits is vital for meeting your business goals. Use “Smart Bidding for store visits” or “Smart Bidding for store sales” to maximize total sales. Bid the right amount to attract the right customers. It does not matter whether they end up purchasing online or in your store. This is an important tool for helping increase sales and ensure you continue to be a business. 

Need help with using Google Business Profile or Google Ads? Call 248.528.3600.

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Review Snippet 

Recipe Snippet

Music Snippet 

Product Markup Snippet 

Movie Snippet

Events Snippet 

Use Structured Data to Get Rich Snippets

Structured data is a type of standardized code format that communicates information about your business’s web page content to search engines. It must contain two important factors to be successful: Schema and the format. Schema is the vocabulary that tells the search engine about the entity elements on your page and the format is the type of markup code that communicates schema to the search engine. These formats are JSON-LD, microdata, and RDFa with JSON-LD favored by Google. An example of creating structured data for a Rich Snippet would be:

Say you have a recipe for chocolate chip cookies on your bakery’s website. You could add structured data for the recipe:

• Cooking duration
• Nutritional information
• Ingredients
• Instructions, etc. 

Schema.org is a site dedicated to the universal vocabulary for structured data. You can use the website to help you write and test your structured data snippets, regardless of format. Additional tools like Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper can generate the markup code instead of writing it from scratch and Google’s Rich Results Test tool to see which rich results Google generates from your markup code.

Need help adding Rich Snippets to your website’s code? Call 248.528.3600.

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Perfect for a quick website audit, Grow My Store gives a comprehensive report on your website. That report includes competitive benchmarking, recommendations, and tailored insights to help you optimize your customer/user experience. You should also check out Test My Site for developer-friendly tips on boosting site speed. It is important to have a fast-loading website to decrease bounce rate. Any corrections suggested may require you to hire a professional web agency for help. 

Do you have an app version of your company’s website? App campaigns help reach mobile shoppers and encourages them to make a purchase, or take action, for example, installing the app itself. Embedding deep links provides better mobile experiences by taking your app users from your ads directly to the corresponding app page of your app. This is key to the customer journey and the path to purchase. It makes it easier for them to complete their desired action, which is essential for good user experience.

Showcase Product Information Across Google

On Google, the Shopping tab helps to showcase your products across many places where customers turn to shop and directly integrates your product within an ad experience. You can increase your exposure at no cost by listing your products on Merchant Center or directly through your e-commerce platform such as WooCommerce for WordPress websites. 

With video increasing popularity, you now can include an interactive product feed directly within the ad unit to turn viewers into customers. Think of the product feed  as a way to turn your ad into a digital storefront. Well design ads that display your company’s brand properly will attract new customers and flag down existing customers to your product or service. Create a seamless path to purchase between brand awareness and the call-to-action.

Increase your click-through rates and conversions by adding information about promotions, sales, free and fast shipping options, and return and refund options directly to your product listing. Shoppers are constantly on the hunt for good deals and want to know all relevant information up front, so it is best to have these pieces of information clearly visible.  

Engage New Customers

Customers shop across multiple Google surfaces every day. Google avenues are Search, Discover, YouTube, Maps, and the Shopping tab. To grow your online sales, it’s important to know which ad campaigns are right for your target market. Reach the right person and convert them into a loyal customer with Google Ads.

Back in April, Smart Shopping and Local campaigns gained an upgrade to Performance Max campaigns. Performance Max campaigns allow you to promote your products or services across all of Google’s advertising channels and inventory by creating one easy-to-manage campaign. This should be less stressful for small businesses due to fact they now can focus on one area of Google analytics instead of multiple analytics for separate campaigns. With new ways to discover, research, and purchase, customers are engaging across an ever-growing number of channels, and it is important to appear on most of them. 

As mentioned earlier videos are big in advertising right now. A Video action campaign is a simple, cost-effective way to drive more conversions on and off your company’s YouTube channel. This campaign helps you drive engagement with your video ads by scaling them across the YouTube Home feed, watch pages, connected TV, and more with a clear call-to-action button. These are perfect for businesses that require demonstration of their product or service.  

Inspired to start a Google Ad Campaign? Call 248.528.3600.

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Step 1: Create a List of Keywords 

Depending on the industry your business is in, the topics, and access to research tools could be flooded. Here are some of the most common ways to create a keyword list: 

• Google’s Keyword Planner or SEMRush used for researching competitors’ keywords
• Check for common keywords with Ahrefs or AnswerThePublic

• Use your website data from Google Search Console
• Look in suggested searches on search engines and brainstorm ideas

Step 2: Sort Keywords into Groups

Group keywords using an automated tool such as Keyword Insights or manually plug the terms into a excel spreadsheet based on good search volume, same search intent, items your think you can rank on, or are appropriate for the marketing funnel stage you are currently in. After that, you will need to identify keyword modifiers around the cluster you formed. This can be enhancement terms, for example, you are researching search intent for strawberry jelly. Some repeat terms that show up might be “healthy” or “organic”.  

Step 3: Other Ways to Cluster by Topic

When you have identified the keyword clusters that answer the questions your audience asks the most, you can start creating a content plan around those clusters you have discovered. Some clusters have subjects in common and can be further grouped into topic clusters. Use the hierarchy of most to least relevant to create a page structure or sitemap for your business’s website. In the middle of every topic cluster, place a piece of content that can target a large number of keywords and phrases. Then surround the larger content withsmaller pieces of content. These content pieces are usually blog posts. This will allow you to focus more on certain topics, build up internal linking, and generally explore the various aspects of the topic that may be too rich to fit on one page without exhausting the reader. You could also use these keyword clusters for Google ads and other marketing campaigns if you fear your website is getting too crowded. 

Struggling to cluster keywords? Our SEO service term can help! Call 248.528.360

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Take a Different Approach to Keyword Search

Many marketers take a keyword-first approach to content marketing. They often focus on what keywords to target based on which keywords have the highest volume that has traffic potential and which ones are easiest to rank for with low competition. However, this is strategy is not practical in the long run. It is better to focus on your target’s pain-point and build your keywords around that. Here are 5 ways to help you get started research and coming up with ideas for content:

1. Comparison posts – Compare your product or service to your top competitors.

2. Best product or service lists – Searchers discover the best products or services in the category they are searching for. Make your content quality is worthy to appear in said category.

3. Alternatives to ‘suggested product/service’ – Searchers discover alternatives to your competitors’ products or services. Make sure to show up as an alternative to other like yours. Think about a feature you have that other don’t.  

4. Articles that talk about pricing – Write about the pricing of your own product or service, even if you have it hidden. You can point out ranges and compare to your competitors.

5. Product or Service use cases – Searchers figure out how to solve a problem they have and presents your product or service as a potential solution.

Ask Directly to Identify Conversion Focused SEO Topics to Write About

If you are stuck, sometimes it is best to ask your target audience directly. Social media, email surveys, phone calls, and in-person and virtual interviews are great ways to get the answers you seek. Here are 5 questions you can ask to get to know your customer and gain essential SEO keywords to boost your content:  

1. What was the problem you were looking to solve before stumbling across our product or service?

2. If our product/service were no longer to exist, what product/service would you use as an alternative?

3. How would you describe our product/service to a friend who knew nothing about us?

4. What are the top 3 benefits that you receive from our product/service?

5. If you were to research our product or service, what would you search for?

Still struggling to come up will a SEO strategy? Call 248.528.360 

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41% of shoppers go to Google when discovering a new brand according to their survey across countries. As your company’s brand grows, it’s important to appear across places where potential customers may be browsing and to create real value that is meaningful and distinct through your content. Immersive and creative content in channels such as video, search, and feeds on Google can help build brand awareness. It will also help you differentiate your brand from your competition with shoppers who are in the market for products or services like yours.

Connect with Customers Through Video Marketing 

Over its lifetime YouTube has evolved from purely an entertainment platform to a place where viewers go to learn, stream, and get inspired by their next purchase. Google found that every day people watch over a billion hours of video and generate billion of views on YouTube. That is a huge amount of people and opportunity to create potential new customers. Video reach campaigns can help spread your brand’s message, product advertisement, or service demonstration reach as many people as possible in your target audience demographic at a reasonable cost. This is perfect if you are small business or if you marketing budget is tight. 

Let Your Business be the Answer When Users Search and Browse 

According to the guide, 61% of consumers in surveyed countries around the world say they visit multiple websites before settling on what to buy and who to buy it from. This means shoppers do not always have a specific company in mind when they search the category they are interested in. They usually search for reviews or articles first to help inform their decision. There are many ways to highlight your good reviews or demonstrate trustworthiness. Here are some important items in include in your digital marketing strategy to achieve this:  

• Broad match keywords & Smart Bidding

 Broad match can save time, simplify your Google account, and increase website traffic by finding all relevant searches that are expected to perform. Combine with Smart Bidding to set the right bid for each search within your performance goals.

• Responsive search ads

Responsive search ads combine creativity with machine learning to help show relevant ads to users. If a customer is searching Google without a specific brand or product in mind, you can put your products in the spotlight by appearing in these searches.

• Image extensions 

Compelling visuals can help you differentiate your brand from companies that sell something similar with shoppers across Google. To optimize your ads’ performance, use image extensions to complement your existing text ads with relevant visuals that engage your audience and drive a call-to-action.

• Discovery campaigns 

Discovery campaigns can help you deliver highly visual and inspiring personalized ad experiences to your target audience who are ready to discover and engage with your brand. With this solution, you can reach up to 3 billion users on feeds across Google and YouTube with a single campaign.

• Audience solutions 

To build consideration among users who are actively looking to make a purchase, use in-market audience targeting. This drives action from new customers who share similar characteristics with existing customers, use similar audiences. To reengage existing customers across the web, use Customer Match. Telia Norge increased their revenue by 15% and conversion rate by 22% among existing customers using this service. 

Ready to optimize your marketing plan with these Google tips? Call 248.528.360

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According to Google’s Retail Marketing Guide 48% of consumers in surveyed countries around the world say they get inspiration for purchases when they are online. Shoppers browse across Google and YouTube to discover new brands and products that are relevant to them. Their methods go as follows:

• Inspiration forms when watching YouTube Videos. 
  • 78% of people surveyed in the U.S. say they feel they get the highest-quality info about products when shopping or browsing on YouTube

• Browse Google Images

• Scroll through Google Discover to catch up on interesting topics

Engage Customers as They Research 

Before making a purchase, customers seek information from trusted sources to compare products and narrow down their options. Best in category, prices, and the latest reviews are important factors customers look for. 89% agree that YouTube creators give the best information about products and brands. YouTube reviewers hit all the important factors and more trusted due to the fact the person is visible vs a star review that is faceless and could be interpreted as a bot. Consider YouTube reviewers when coming up with a social media marketing plan. 

Consumers also look up information and articles on Google Search. 40% of shoppers go to Google when researching a purchase they plan to make in-store or online. It is important that your SEO strategy is up to date. Check your website’s ranking on Google SERPs. If it not where you want it to be you may need to work with a digital marketing agency on your on-page and off-page SEO techniques. And if your budget allows, invest in Google Ads. 

Convert Customers Looking to Purchase

Convincing potential clients is key. Shoppers buy from brands that can provide a seamless experience. 31% of consumers in surveyed countries say they are researching online more before purchasing to avoid out-of-stock situations, inventory blockage, and shipping challenges or delays. They want to be able to buy a product online as soon as they find it or see what a local store has in stock. 

Utilize Google Maps, especially for local business traffic. Google Maps searches for “shopping near me” have grown globally by over 100% year over year. Maps also use to be GoogleMyBusiness app. Currently you can set a profile using Maps. Create and maintain your profile so you can be found easily. 

The Shopping tab is an underrated tool business often forget about. Almost half (49%) of consumers in surveyed countries expect to be able to buy from any store online. You want your online store to show up in the Shopping tab. Make sure in your website’s CMS your product details like name, price, and description are accurate and visible. 

Update your marketing plan based on these tips today! Call 248.528.360 

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