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Thrifty Digital Marketing Strategies for Greater Search Engine Optmization

Analyzing your day to day online activities and re-purposing information can have a profound effect on your digital marketing strategy. Find success with less!

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Hi. My name is Jason and I’m a bit of a mental case. My wife likes to send me links to products she’d like to purchase and instead of looking at the new ottoman, I explore the website’s backlink portfolio or rip apart their URL structure. I just can’t contain myself sometimes; everything I come across is an opportunity to hone my skills, giving my clients that slight edge towards achieving the desired outcome. My site audit OCD boils down to a low budget method of learning new ways to utilize and incorporate advanced tactics into my digital strategies, making full use of resources that are available to me. Since digital marketing encompasses many different actions, every experience can be re-channeled into strategies or offer insights into how actions can be improved upon. The thriftiest of digital marketers realize this and will utilize every tidbit of information that they have at their disposal.

Repurposing Paid Digital Data

In a previous life I was an in-house digital marketer; PPC and SEO all day, every day. To make the most out of every task, I quickly learned to utilize one skill and apply it elsewhere because it opened up a slew of fantastic tactics that bettered my understanding and made the most out of all of the analytics at my disposal. Since the pay-per-click crowd is always looking for every last gain they can squeeze out of a campaign, a synergistic relationship is created with SEO because you can quickly:

  • Use ad copy to optimize title tags and meta data for click through rates
  • Use negative keyword data and keywords that don’t convert to see what keyword phrases don’t allow for success or gain new ideas for content
  • Turn banner ad or display network placements that are converting into new link building opportunities
  • Learn what landing pages convert and why, which can then be applied to other areas of the website even if conversion rate optimization isn’t being utilized

Not only is this information useful for search engine optimization but it can be helpful when crafting campaigns and messages for social media. I’ve seen some interesting information earned from the paid ad space that opened up micro-segments that I had previously written off or didn’t consider. Easy wins can make you look good, so love on the pay-per-click strategies and the folks who employ them!

No PPC? Hunt for High Impressions

Not into PPC? No worries, Google is giving SEO’s actionable information in Webmaster Tools with impressions and click-through rate details correlating to keyword phrases. Impressions are a good initial indicator that a website’s optimization is improving but marketers who are constantly pushing for greater gains know that high impressions with a low click-through rate equals lost opportunity. Experimenting, testing, and improving upon title tags and meta descriptions for the purpose of increasing CTRs will give search engines stronger signals when the on-page content is: superb, keeping users on site, visiting multiple pages and not bouncing.

It’s a bit of a mind boggle that Google would report this information as optimizing title tags and meta descriptions to increase your organic click-through rates steals the cheese from pay-per-click, lowering Google’s bottom line. Frugal and astute digital marketers will steal Google’s cheese while they can, and bask in the sweet, sweet rewards!

Email Tactics for Cheap Digital Marketing

While I despise my inbox, email creates some interesting opportunities and is often an underused piece of your digital marketing estate. With multiple employees sending hundreds, if not thousands (shudder) per day, strategizing email signatures are a penny pinching opportunity to subtle promote almost anything with trust identifiers. Our agency has a client who is a wedding DJ who also hosts and produces a syndicated weekly radio show which is available as a podcast on iTunes. In his email signature we included logos for both of his services and the related social media icons. Doing this slowly builds listenership and followers naturally but it also provides prospective clients the opportunity to learn more about him, his services, and expertise. He doesn’t just ‘spin the ones and twos’ on the weekends; he’s constantly improving his craft day in and day out. Highlighting this in an email signature provides one of the least aggressive sales pitches there are while leading prospects to other digital properties.

Send Love, the Digital Way

While we’re on the subject of electronic mail don’t overlook confirmation forms and auto responders. Confirmation pages and follow up emails such as ones that thank a customer for making a purchase or alert them that their order has shipped, have higher open rates and provide an avenue to further extend your brand voice. The hard work of earning the sale or sign up is done, but the economical marketer is focused on keeping that customer engaged. With the majority of these messages and landing pages containing drab boilerplate copy, the few that ooze cool quickly rise to the top keeping customers interested in your message and brand while potentially keeping them engaged with a website longer.

The inbox search function has gotten so good, I’ve quickly hoarded my way to a billion email messages that somehow only use 5% of my data limit. While I might be telling a lie, making the copy in your digital messages helpful to a customer will provide value, giving them the option to refer to it as often as they please instead of sending it to the digital waste bin. Including the top five frequently asked questions or even providing care instructions will only strengthen your message and keep it in digital storage.

Thrifty Ain’t Chintzy Digital Marketing 

These tactics only scratch the surface of what can be achieved by tapping into all the data that is available and looking at new ways to utilize it. I’ve found the easiest way to uncover golden opportunities is to ask myself, “how else could this be used?” Reducing waste and maximizing what you have at your disposal improves efficiency, maximizing the digital marketing dollar.

How do incorporate unconventional data sources into your digital strategies?

Category SEO
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Jason White Dragon Search Marketing

Jason White is an integral member of the SEO team at DragonSearch in the NYC area. A natural linkbuilder, Jason ...

Thrifty Digital Marketing Strategies for Greater Search Engine Optmization

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