Whether a Recession with SEO and Digital Marketing

Recent economic conditions triggered by the global pandemic are impacting all businesses, everywhere, in every industry. Recession and inflation hurt. Businesses are tightening their budgets and many consumers are afraid and spending less during the economic downturn. That’s precisely why it’s imperative to draw organic traffic to your website; traffic can be pulled in by a strategic digital marketing plan that includes search engine optimization, content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing.

SEO is Essential to Draw Free Organic Traffic to Your Website

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) takes time to set up and maintain, but it is imperative. It involves updating your website with quality text, product descriptions, blog posts, and content that search engines will use to bring users to your site. Your business has something to offer and editing your website to clarify and enhance that message makes it easy for search engines to find it and serve it up to people who are googling topics related to your company’s work.

What a dreamy and easy place the internet would be if getting an audience for your business was as simple as building a website. But “if you build it, they will come” doesn’t work when you have hundreds or thousands of competitors who all have websites quite similar to yours.

SEO experts constantly research keywords they want to rank well on and pay careful attention to alternative keywords and content that will attract potential customers without paid ads. When it is done well, your website’s content can increase organic traffic and visitors to your site without having to pay for them with digital ads.

Content Marketing That Draws Customers

Let’s say you sell tires. You carry all the same brands as every other tire shop: Goodyear, Bridgestone, Michelin. You can help customers find the best all-season tires, all-terrain tires, or snow tires for their vehicle. But it’s impossible for your website to stand out if everything is just bare bones and describes the same products and services that all of your competitors offer.

You know your business better than anyone, and you need to make sure the search engines know the details to bring searchers to your site. Here’s an example: You’ve worked hard at cutting wait times for your customers to buy and have their new tires installed. Buyers leave as satisfied customers and the experience was faster than any other tire shop in your area. Consider writing a blog post about how you move customers quickly through the process all while providing top notch customer service.

Or, since your expertise is managing a tire shop, you can hire an SEO expert to write your blog posts for you. An SEO specialist can help you not only find the products, services, and keywords to focus on, but can write content and enhance your entire website.

Let’s get back to the hypothetical world where you sell tires. You’ve been in the tire business for a long time and you know a lot about all-terrain tires. The tire manufacturers you work with produce a lot of advertising and content for their websites that focus on their own particular brand of all-terrain tires. You might think the internet has enough information for users looking to learn about all-terrain tires. But a woman who lives just seven miles from your shop heard from her cousin in Utah that he prefers all-terrain tires because he often travels on gravel roads. She decides to do a Google search about all-terrain tires.

This is a time when your website is at a huge advantage, if you’ve enhanced the SEO on your site and have specific content that goes in depth about all-terrain tires. Google knows where the woman is – she’s less than 10 miles from your shop. (Google almost always knows.) Google search engines find that your website, from a business nearby, has a blog post that specifically discusses the advantages of all-terrain tires in her community, and in her state. She’ll click on the link, learn what she was curious about, and see that your company is not only an expert on all-terrain tires, but you’re nearby. You’re perfectly positioned to make a sale from this completely organic visitor to your website.

Good quality SEO makes your website more self-sufficient. It’s like planting a huge vegetable garden or an orchard of fruit trees. Sure, you have to do some maintenance to keep the weeds down and keep the garden watered, just like SEO work requires some ongoing work to stay on top of critical keywords. But you will end up reaping big harvests…a bounty of fruits and vegetables (or customers) come your way because you’ve done the work.

Email Marketing Brings Customers Back

Another important element of your digital marketing plan is email marketing. A one-year email marketing calendar will help you plan regular opportunities to communicate with your customers. Start with your biggest news or promotions each year – when new products are released, seasonal reminders, or holiday-related sales promotions – and then fill in from there, so that your customers or clients are hearing from you on a regular basis, fairly consistently.

Social Media Marketing Entertains, Maintains, and Grows Your Customer Pool

For social media enthusiasts, marketing via Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, or Twitter is a labor of love. There’s no mistaking that social media can have a massive impact on sales but remember you don’t have to be everywhere; choose the platform(s) where your customers are and post regularly at a pace that’s manageable and easy to maintain. Your audience on social media will appreciate posts that convey a consistent voice that represents your business with sincerity and enthusiasm.

Hard Dollars vs Soft Dollars During a Recession

One of the easiest ways to trim hard dollars from your budget during a recession is by suspending digital advertising (pay-per-click) ads. Instead focus on directing soft dollars to SEO and digital marketing that can build up your website so that it ranks well above the competition and generates free organic traffic.

Summary

Hopefully these article has highlighted some of the reason that its important to engage in SEO and digital marketing during a recession. SEO can be an affordable way to drive traffic to your site long term, and digital engagement activities like social media and email will help increase conversions at a relatively low cost.

If you are interested in learning more about Amazing SEO and our digital marketing conversations, click this link to get a free Audit for your website. From there, we will have a conversion on which plans best fits your needs.