Bergen County, New Jersey is a competitive place to do business in. As one of the most densely populated areas in the country, chances are you have many rivals in your industry to compete with. And with many affluent residents in the area, consumers tend to be very selective.
Add in the high tax rates New Jersey is known for, and overall you are looking at an extremely tough market.
However, with challenges come opportunities. With many high-earning consumers in a densely populated area, there is likely a sustainable market for your business.
To succeed, a business in Bergen County needs an effective digital marketing strategy to reach its target audience efficiently. Outlined in this post are key digital marketing tactics that will help you attract visitors to your website and generate leads.
Invest in a Well Designed Website
Consumers do all of their research online. That means your website will likely be their first impression of your business.
To be able to develop a successful digital marketing strategy, you first need to invest in a great looking website.
Your website will be the foundation of your digital marketing strategy. Don’t think of your website anymore as a “brochure” to show off your services and past work.
Instead, view your website as a platform to attract new customers and generate growth for your business.
A high-quality website is essential for any business located in Bergen County. With so many companies in the area, making a great first impression is critical for establishing trust and appearing legitimate.
Here are just some of the benefits you can expect from a high performing business website:
- Improved search ranking on Google. This will allow you to get found online by people performing searches related to your business and it’s services. This is huge, as these types of searches often indicate a consumer is close to making a purchase.
- Improved brand identity and legitimacy. Looking around the web, it’s clear that many websites of Bergen County businesses haven’t been updated in some time. No surprise, they look badly outdated. The last thing you want your website visitors to think once your site has loaded is to wonder whether you are still in business
- Lead Generation. As we’ll get into in this post, a website can be your most effective sales tool. With consumers doing all of their research and shopping online, it’s necessary to have a digital marketing strategy that takes advantage of this environment.
We always tell our clients not to view the cost of a website as an expense.
Rather, view it as an investment.
With the right digital marketing strategy behind it, the ROI generated by a website in the form of a new business can easily eclipse the cost.
Fortunately, creating a high-quality website for your business has never been easier.
Freelance web designers have all the skills to get your website online and provide many advantages over traditional web development agencies. And, with website builders like WordPress, managing your site once the project is complete is a breeze.
Run Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn Ads
Running paid social media ads on either Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn is one of the most effective digital marketing tactics today.
They allow you to reach extremely well-defined audiences - meaning you can target the exact type of customer you want with your ads.
And you can spend however much you like, making them work for most marketing budgets.
Running paid ads on social media is effective because:
- The declining effectiveness of organic (non-paid) social media marketing
- The ability to be extremely specific with who you target - resulting in less wasted spend allowing you to easily get in front of your target demographic
- it’s where consumers' attention is at.
- It allows you to drive traffic to your website and content offers, increasing the potential lead generation abilities of your site.
In this section, we’ll touch on the above points to demonstrate why running paid ads is essential for Bergen County businesses looking to grow.
The Decline of Organic Social Media Marketing.
Facebook tweaked it’s algorithm a few years back that resulted in users seeing more of their friend's activity in their news feed and fewer posts from businesses.
The result is that posts on Facebook by a business now reach far fewer people. This has made it very difficult to build up a strong social following and earn page likes.
Unfortunately, what worked in 2010 on Facebook no longer works in 2019.
Facebook has become a pay to play platform where to get the most out of it, you need to run paid ads.
Extremely Specific Targeting
Paid social media marketing has exploded because it allows digital marketers to be very specific with who sees their ads.
With other forms of advertising (TV, Radio, Out of Home, Podcasts, etc.) advertisers only have a vague idea of who is seeing their ads based on a few broad demographic stats about the audience.
With paid ads on these social platforms, it’s the exact opposite. You can know exactly who your targeting, ensuring all of your advertising dollars are going towards consumers who would be willing to do business with you.
Running ads on Facebook/Instagram allows you to target people based on all the information Facebook has gathered on them. For a full list, check out the official facebook targetting parameters.
Consumer’s Attention
Everyone seems glued to their phones these days and most of the time they're on social media. That’s no surprise, as we have data showing that on average, people spend 2.5 hours per day on social networking alone.
For Bergen County based businesses, to develop an effective digital marketing strategy you need to be where your consumers' attention is at.
Smartphones have effectively replaced television for consumers.
The big ad platforms mentioned in this section are the equivalent to what CBS and NBC were when television was just starting. Only now, it’s actually affordable and you can target your ideal customer much better.
Create Content and use Inbound Marketing to Attract New Prospects
Unfortunately, it takes more than a beautiful website to bring in traffic (visitors) to your website. Google looks for high authority sites to list at the top of their search results.
How do you get your business there? By creating high-quality content that is relevant to your business and customers.
This is where inbound marketing comes in.
By creating content that your audience will find useful, your business will rank in the search results when nearby consumers search for terms related to your business.
For example, let’s say you’re a landscaping company in Bergen County and you write a blog post called “10 Tips for Keeping Your Lawn Green All Summer Long”.
When a nearby person Googles a term related to keeping their lawn green, they would find the post and be introduced to your business. Content like that will prove you know what you’re doing and increase the chances of a person contacting you.
After all, wouldn’t you be more likely to hire a landscaper that has multiple lawn care articles on their website? It proves they know what they’re talking about and allows them to develop a positive image in people’s minds.
It’s psychology 101.
By creating high-quality blogs, podcasts, videos, whitepapers, ebooks, or case studies you will have content that makes you discoverable online. You can then repurpose this content and post it on social media to increase your reach.
Struggling to brainstorm content for your business? Check out our step by step guide for brainstorming content ideas for your website.
Inbound marketing will make it easy for your ideal customers to find your website organically. As opposed to traditional marketing, this is a much more cost-efficient and consumer-friendly way to reach your audience.
Leverage Your Website to Generate Leads
Inbound marketing isn’t just about attracting visitors to your site. It’s also what will allow you to generate leads. By producing content for each phase of the buyer's journey, you can attract new visitors and bring them closer to making a purchase.
For your website to be an effective sales tool, you should strategically place forms throughout your website so people can quickly get in touch.
Once that is done, we recommend creating “gated” pieces of content or offer that can only be accessed by people that give you their contact information - such as an email.
In the sections below, we’ll describe a general workflow for using gated content offers to generate leads.
Call To Action
The first step to attracting visitors to your offer is to have a section on a page of your website display it. For example, if you are willing to offer a free consultation, do something similar to what we have below:
The offer here catches attention because it has its own dedicated section. Further, the Call-To-Action button stands out because of its contrasting pink color, encouraging clicks.
Landing Page
To maximize the number of people that give you their info for your content, develop separate landing pages for each offer.
Landing pages are pages on your website dedicated to one specific topic and are generally used for lead generation. By designing a high-quality landing page, you can describe the benefits of your offer and answer any potential questions someone may have to encourage more conversions.
Read: 10 Tips to Creating a Great Landing Page
Thank-You Page and Follow Up Email
Once someone has filled out a form on the landing page, have the page redirect to a “Thank You Page” with a link/button that allows them to download your content. Also, be sure to write something relevant to the offer that is on-brand to create a positive customer experience.
Once you have their email, you should consider sending them a Thank-You email as well.
From there, you have lots of options. You could use email marketing to enroll them in automated campaigns that seek to move them closer to becoming a paying customer - more on that in the next section.
Or, you or one of your salespeople could follow up directly with the prospect.
How you approach following up with a prospect who has downloaded your content is heavily dependent on your business and what your sales cycle looks like.
However, there’s no doubt that you will have a much better chance of closing the deal since you’ve already given them value and established your expertise.
Use Email Marketing to stay Top of Mind
Email Marketing isn’t dead - in fact far from it. With 91% of people still checking their inbox daily, it’s perhaps the best way for you to stay top of mind.
Email marketing serves two primary purposes today:
- Staying top of mind with current or past customers by delivering helpful content or newsletters that provide value and can result in referrals.
- Nurturing sales prospects down your sales funnel through automated email marketing campaigns or direct follow-ups.
To get people’s email information, we suggest creating a significant piece of free content such as an ebook. To download, they’ll have to give you their email address. From there, you can continue to deliver them helpful content directly to their inbox.
This will allow you to get your content to them directly instead of being reliant on social media.
As you email them content or other offers/news, they’ll get used to seeing your name in their inbox. This will lead to increased trust and a higher likelihood of them doing business with you.
Conclusion
Digital marketing is the most effective way to reach new people with your content and grow a business today. Don’t just take our word for it - there are numerous case studies of startups growing through only digital marketing.
For businesses in Bergen County, New Jersey, your digital marketing strategy is only as strong as your website. Without a well-designed website, it’s going to be extremely difficult to appear legitimate online. To book a free web design consultation with us, hit the button in the navigation to discuss revamping your website.
