Growing Your Photography Business (Part 15): Email Campaigns, Local SEO, Paid Ads

Use an Email Campaign

Email campaigns are essential to growing your business using educational materials.

There are two essential factors needed to succeed in email marketing: CRM and content.

CRM - or a Customer Relationship Management system is a tool that can help you segment your audience and send better-targeted email campaigns. CRM makes your customers feel that you know them better. Keap and HubSpot are the top CRM tools.
Content - you must be mindful of what type of content your audience needs. You need to match it to your current services or products and find the possibility of monetizing, such as turning your "free readers" to paying customers.

Once you have the two factors above, you can create an email campaign plan. Identify what audience you'll target, figure out your goal, generate the content, and fuse subtle approaches to selling your solutions.

Use email campaign tools that fit your needs and skillset. I have experience with Mailchimp and Mailer Lite, and you'll be able to find your favorite through time. Assess the performance of your emails by using metrics such as open rates and click-throughs, and use these to brainstorm your next campaign.

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Local SEO

Local SEO is a vital factor in growing your business. When you're looking for a company to fix your drainage, you most likely have found the plumber by quickly typing "plumbers near me" in your search engine. Google, for example, will show you results that are different from the other person who types the same query in Australia. This customized search result is local SEO.

Here are the noteworthy stats why local SEO is essential:

46% of all Google searches are looking for local information
97% of people learn about a company online
72% of consumers that did a local search visited the store within 5 miles
28% of local searches become purchases

To see a practical example of local SEO, go to your search engine and type "keyword/service" + "city/location/zip." You may see company names at the top results with reviews and links - a place where you want your business to sit. Local SEO is about being discovered by searches near you.

Here are the top ranking factors to improve your local SEO:

Optimize your website - local SEO is much like organic SEO with a few additions, like adding the location keyword to your titles.
Place your official business address to your dedicated contact page and footer. Make sure this is consistent throughout other online sources.
Add your location to Google My Business and Maps- the whole purpose of local SEO is for people to locate or identify your proximity. Put your business to Google Maps and Google My Business (GMB) and embed the map to your website. Google Maps is the dominant search tool for local searches, and 77% of searchers use it to find a business.
Add testimonials - adding testimonials and reviews to your site will boost your local search results. Invite customers to review you on GMB and other review places.
Add Schema - Scheme.org is a tool that helps search engines understand what your website is about and help boost your local rankings.
Claim your social media profiles - the fact is, people also use social media search bars to look for businesses. Make sure you put the keywords to your title and optimize your profiles.
Create local content - blogging is essential to SEO. Make sure you have a blog section to your site where new material is auto-updated. When writing posts, include the local city and neighborhood names when you can, make the blog as helpful as possible, and include links to your other pages and other useful sites.
Directories - contact online catalog providers and place your company profile on their site. Make sure to put a link of your website in their list to boost your ranking.

Paid Ads

One of the noticeable effects of the coronavirus crisis is that paid ads are becoming cheaper. In SEO, you may find remarkable results after six months or a year, but in paid ads, you can experience effects immediately.

Low ad competition drives this lower ad trend. When small businesses and big corporations spend less on ads, one way or another, advertisers find fewer auctions and lower prices.

Another factor why ads are cheaper is that people are withholding cash as much as possible. When ads don't serve people's current predicaments, sales conversions are not as high as they should be.

The best way to find opportunities in lower ad rates is to assess which keywords and solutions can best solve your audience's pains. You can do this by: