SEO

4 Key Strategies To Bring Your Business To The Next Level

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Over the past few years, the cannabis industry has grown exponentially. At the end of 2016, California – along with Maine, Nevada, and Massachusetts- joined the ranks of other progressive sites and legalized the recreational use of cannabis. This move by California is projected to increase the value of the cannabis market to $20 billion in the next 4 years.  In the next decade, it is estimated that the cannabis industry will be worth an astounding $50 billion, that is more than 8 times its current size!

The cannabis industry has come a long way from the days of homemade baked goods and nameless products on the shelf. As the experts in cannabis marketing and advertising, Marijuana Marketing Gurus can help you seize every opportunity this growing industry has to offer. In today’s market, it is becoming increasingly important to create a brand that engages with its community and maintains a strong presence in the marketplace. Below we have identified 4 key strategies you must invest in order to smoke the competition.

1. Invest in Innovative, Engaging & Educational Content Creation For Your Brand

From dispensaries to gourmet cannabis baked goods, the cannabis marketplace offers a vast array of choices for consumers. Because consumers have so much choice when it comes to cannabis products it becomes imperative for businesses to embrace the 4 elements of content marketing: email, social media, blogging, and video. These 4 elements help you create a community around your brand by engaging with your current and potential customers all at once. Not only do these elements add value to your brand, but they can provide you with valuable insight into who your audience is and what they want.

2. Invest in Photography

We have all heard the phrase a picture is worth a thousand words. Whether they are surfing the web or shopping the aisles of the local market, people see thousands of images a day. Which is why it is vital that the images you use in your branding catch the eye of every potential customer from the get-go.

Stock Photos Vs. Professional Photography

While there is a breadth of stock photo libraries out there, the images are often generic and do not reflect who you are as a business or the products you sell. By hiring a professional photographer to shoot photos of your team, your operation and your products you can show your customers exactly who you are.

3. Create Packaging That Is Both Aesthetically Pleasing & Meets Regulations.

For today’s savvy consumer the design of the packaging has as much to do with their purchasing decision as the quality of the actual product. In fact, 70% of all purchasing decisions happen at checkout. So it becomes essential for cannabis business to create packaging that appeals to consumers and easily distinguishes their brand from the competition. In addition, cannabis packing does come with all kinds of regulations you must adhere to, so it is vital to work with a designer who is well versed in the rules of cannabis packaging.

4. Always Keep Track of Your Analytics & Metrics

The number one mistake that any novice marketer will make is to set and forget their strategy. Without regularly checking in on your progress, there is no way to see if your strategy is working. It is vital to utilize tools like Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Facebook and Twitter publishing tools to track growth and analyze your audience’s response. It’s not enough simply to set and forget a marketing strategy without regularly checking in on your progress. Data is gold to marketers and can help you make informed decisions when developing your marketing strategy.

One of the biggest mistakes cannabis businesses make is not bringing on professionals to implement the strategies discussed above. At Marijuana Marketing Gurus, our experts will help you build your brand. Let our experts take your business to the next level. Call us today to speak to one of our consultants.

 

 

3 Digital Marketing Trends Making a Difference in 2017

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Do you want to make a difference in 2017 with your digital marketing strategies? If so, you must be able to anticipate changes and jump on the latest trends. We have made that a little easier for you by scouring the internet for the biggest trends in digital marketing for 2017.

#1 There Will Be a Transformation in Email Marketing

Email marketing is constantly evolving as technology changes. This year, we will see quite a few changes in email marketing. Here are a few of the biggest ones:

No More Newsletters

For several years, email newsletters have been losing momentum. Many people simply opt out of them or delete them without opening. Email content will be geared more towards the individual and will be more entertaining and visual.

Optimized for Mobile

With the significant shift towards mobile content, it is important to optimize your emails for mobile.

Fewer Emails

Most people’s inboxes are overflowing with emails. Many get deleted without ever being read. For 2017, the focus will be on making a difference with fewer, yet more quality emails. Emails should be engaging and relevant to your customers.

#2 Search Engine Optimization Will Evolve

There have been numerous changes in search engine optimization or SEO over the past year. Expect it to continue to grow in 2017. There will be significant shifts in the way that people search for information and SEO must evolve to account for those changes.

Voice Search Will Dominate

Voice search has become more popular than ever. Thanks to new technology, it has become much more user-friendly. Voice search is quickly becoming one of the fastest-growing search options available. We can understand the appeal. Who doesn’t want a hands-free and easy way to find information? Marketers must optimize content for voice search.

SEO Will Move Beyond Keywords

Today’s consumers know what they are searching for when they turn to the internet for information. Search engines are beginning to focus more on user intent rather than on keywords. Consumers can enter entire phrases in search engines and get better results than just entering keywords. Therefore, businesses will need to optimize their content for user intent rather than for keywords. You will need to find out what brings users to your page and optimize based on their intent.

#3 There Will Be Big Changes in Social Media Marketing 

It is clear that social media is here to stay. Therefore, marketers must keep up with shifts in these platforms and adjust marketing strategies accordingly. For 2017, the following trends in social media marketing will be huge:

  • Live video
  • Customer service chat bots
  • Shoppable video ads

Since new technology, trends and tools emerge all the time; you must keep up with the latest advancements and trends in the industry if you want to capture your customers’ attention. Knowing the above three trends in digital marketing will help your company stay relevant in 2017.

 

3 SEO Strategies To Increase Your Traffic

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shutterstock_150192734As the cannabis industry continues to grow, more and more regulations will be imposed on those trying to make a living in the marketplace. Many states have imposed strict regulations when is comes to advertising. This has forced many in the business to rely almost exclusively on organic search traffic to grow their business. To that end, search engine optimization (SEO) has become the cornerstone of their digital marketing strategy.

The SEO landscape is constantly changing and you need to keep abreast of what techniques work and which ones are now out of favor. The following three SEO strategies will help you drive more traffic to your website and, in turn, help you make more sales.

Site Speed

This is possibly the most overlooked areas when it comes to driving traffic to your site. If you site takes too long to load a visitor will simply leave and go on to the next one. This could cost you dearly if you are not careful.

In a recent study by KISSmetrics, they found that a mere one-second delay in loading time can cost a business 7% in conversions. And it makes sense. If customers are not hanging around for your site to load they certainly will not buy anything.

So how do you know if your site is loading fast enough? Well, Google has a tool that can help. They have set up PageSpeed Insights to determine if you site is fast and will give you suggestions to make it faster. Most of the time the culprits are media files (photos or videos) that are too large and slow down your site.

Take some time to conduct a site speed test and make any changes that are necessary. When your site is fast you will get more visitors and will most likely help increase your search rankings.

Social Signals

Social signals are becoming a more important part of any SEO strategy. Both Google and Bing are now using data from social media sites to help determine how high to rank a website. The reasoning is clear. If many people are sharing content from a website then it must be popular and the search engines want to serve up popular, relevant search results to their users.

When determining the value of a social signal, the search engines look at a few factors.

– the number of tweets and shares that a particular URL (website) has

– the authority of the person tweeting and sharing the website’s content

Notice we are not talking about likes and followers. The sharing of content is far more important that the number of followers you have on social media.

This means that you must create fresh, relevant content that your customers are searching for. When conducting keyword research, look for those phrases that your customers are searching for.

Internal Linking Structure

While building backlinks is not as important for SEO as it once was, your internal link structure has become more important. By using anchor text to link to other pages of your site you are showing the search engines the depth of information your site has.

Proper internal linking will accomplish three things:

  1. Helps you visitors navigate your site easily
  2. Clearly defines the architecture of your site for the search engines
  3. Distributes page authority and ranking power throughout your website

This will help improve the SEO value of all the pages in your site. The more pages that you can rank, the more traffic you will drive to your site.

These three SEO tips can help drive more traffic to your site and increase your sales.

 

The Top 4 SEO Techniques To Incorporate In Your Digital Marketing …

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shutterstock_245818666Today’s digital marketing is highly dependent on SEO, which is one of the most effective ways to get your brand noticed throughout the world. Unfortunately, things in the world of SEO are always changing. This is because new techniques are found that are more effective in giving your band’s presence a boost, while other techniques are introduced for the very first time.With this in mind here are the top four SEO techniques you’ll want to incorporate into your digital marketing.

Make Your Website Mobile Friendly

It’s important that your website is mobile friendly because mobile Internet use far exceeds computer use today. With this in mind, one of your top priorities must be to build a user-friendly mobile website. In doing so, you also want to make sure your website doesn’t have any issues that are annoying, thus harming your ranking. This includes things like content that won’t play, faulty redirects, and slow loading pages.

Place More Importance on ROI

You no longer need to place as much importance on keyword ranking. Instead, you want to pay more attention to your actual return on investment. So, if you have a one-page website focusing on a specific keyword, but people aren’t buying anything from the page, then you’re definitely not getting the best ROI from your digital marketing campaign. When this occurs you’ll want to improve your online marketing’s effectiveness. This will require you to adjust your analytics so you can follow your visitor’s path up to the point where they actually make a purchase.

Prioritize Better Social Engagement

Instead of wasting your time trying to find the latest and greatest ways of social media engagement, set your sights on connecting with people in real time instead of through software programs. Your customers, especially the loyal ones, want to hear from you when they mention your brand or ask you questions. They’re not only on social media to engage with their friends, but also to find solutions from the brands they follow too.

Consistently Fine-Tune Your Website’s Structure

It’s important to consistently fine-tune your website’s structure. Many digital marketing professionals recommend you improve any issues you have with your website instead of worrying about creating new content. This means doing things like shortening your URLs, fixing broken or 404 links, getting rid of any extra outbound links, simplifying your website’s design and rewriting your content so it meets your visitors’ expectations.

When you take the time to put these digital marketing strategies to work for your site, you’ll see improvement in traffic, which will reflect in your bottom line.