When moderating your next panel discussion, here are 17 thoughtful questions to ask (plus some great tips on creating your own).

1. Recognize your target audience

For their most popular articles, TAR Productions, a video production firm, had between 260 and 1,300 visits each month. Nevertheless, they weren't generating any top-notch leads from their traffic.

When content marketing company Grow and Convert looked at it, the issue was clear. Although they spoke about making films in their postings, their ideal customers weren't doing it. As a result, their work attracted other video production firms rather than their desired clientele, who would never hire them.

The similar error is made by many small enterprises. They produce material for people who are similar to them rather than for their intended audience. For instance, a company that writes about conversion rate optimization (CRO) will draw in CRO specialists, whereas a company that writes about shooting stunning images will draw in amateur photographers.

To effectively sell to your target audience, you must identify who they are in detail. This should be simple if you've done your market research and developed client profiles. You'll already be aware of your intended audience.

For instance, if you have a photographic studio in Singapore, the following people would be prospective target clients:

Millennial couples getting married in Singapore, aged 25 to 35.

Don't yet have a statement like this about your target audience? Not to worry. Create one for your company using the instructions below.

2. Strengthen what is currently effective.

Nobody has unlimited resources, hence nobody can apply every marketing strategy known to man.

You must thus deploy your marketing efforts appropriately.

The easiest approach to do this is to increase spending on the strategies that are already producing results. By developing standard operating procedures (SOPs), recruiting more staff, purchasing equipment, and other measures, you may expand the channel. Do more of what is giving you results if it is.

You must monitor your marketing KPIs if you want to know which channels are effective. If you already carry it out, great. If not, there is always time to begin.

Or you might just ask your recent clients how they heard about you:

3. Discard strategies that don't work.

In the same way that investing more in what is effective also makes sense, so does cutting back on ineffective investments. Avoid attempting to compel a channel to work for your company. Make good use of your resources.

4. Create an email database

We send a newsletter containing all the articles we published that week every week to more than 120,000 subscribers.

They are not just any individuals. These are those who have formally shown an interest in our material.

How did we manage that? Easy: we created an email list.

Email might be outdated in terms of the internet, yet it works surprisingly well as a marketing tool. Email makes it possible to communicate with your audience whenever you choose, but social media networks may purposefully limit your reach.

You'll need to persuade website visitors to sign up for your email list. Offering something in exchange for subscribing is the simplest strategy. The majority of websites provide free eBooks, courses, and occasionally discounts.

For our part, it's a straightforward "subscription" opt-in.

5. Keep your subscribers happy

The quantity of subscribers you have is ultimately simply a number. Just because they subscribed doesn't mean they'll buy from you. You must interact with them and nurture them, which entails sending frequent emails.

But what ought to be sent, and how frequently ought to it be sent?

Everyone will have a different response.

Setting an expectation up front and then living up to it is essential.

For instance, on our blog, we guarantee that everyone who subscribes will receive weekly updates on our content—and we deliver on that promise. We send out a newsletter once a week that contains all the articles we've published that week.

In other words, we deliver on our promises to subscribers.

Your "promise" might not match ours. But whatever it is, be sure to follow through with it.

6. Get the product positioning right.

For the majority of potential clients, you and your rivals are identical. You aren't the only Italian restaurant or gym in the area, after all. There is therefore no justification for them to pick you in particular.

Unless you tell me why, that is.

This is referred to as "positioning" in marketing.

Your positioning should make it abundantly apparent to prospective clients exactly what your product or service is, how it differs from the competition, and why it is important to them.

If you don't accomplish this, people won't purchase from you.

Positioning is a process that takes time, therefore writing about it would require an entire book (there are really several books on positioning!). However, reading Obviously Awesome and using its step-by-step methodology is the most useful approach.

Here is a brief summary:

• Recognize who your top clients are.

• Create a team for positioning, and make sure other teams and departments use the same positioning terminology.

• List your countervailing options.

• Determine the qualities and characteristics that set your product or service apart.

• What do these qualities and characteristics actually do for your consumers, and what is their genuine value?

• The client segments who care the most about your specific value offer should be your target market.

• Write out your stance in a permanent document that may be sent to all teams.

7. Create a Google My Business account.

Business owners may build, maintain, and enhance their Google Business Profile using the free tool Google My Business. By doing this, you may rank higher in pertinent Google searches on both Google Maps and the web.

You shouldn't pass up the opportunity to quickly improve your profile because it will probably only take you 30 minutes, especially if you cater to local clients.

To design a profile that is well-optimized in 30 minutes, follow the instructions below.

Recommend reading: Google My Business Optimization in 30 Minutes

8. Improve your current pages' SEO

The source of 53.3 percent of all website traffic is natural search. And 76% of consumers who use their cellphones to seek for local businesses do so within a day.

Translation: These days, you need to rank on Google if you want more consumers.

You cannot, however, just develop web pages and hope that they rank well. In reality, 90.63% of pages receive no traffic from Google, according to our analysis of one billion pages.

The main factor is that these pages weren't search engine optimized. Additionally, you must do search engine optimization if you wish to appear highly on Google (SEO).

Generally speaking, this entails:

• Being aware of what your consumers are looking for. Conduct keyword research to determine the themes that your consumers are looking for.

• Google that your page is the best result, use SEO best practices.

• Obtaining links to your pages, either naturally or through outreach.

• You may read our SEO for Beginners guide or take our free SEO training course to learn more about SEO.

9. Begin a blog that focuses on products.

Did you know that Google is the only source of the blog's estimated 238,000 monthly visitors?

• Additionally, our blog is the second-biggest source of new clients after word of mouth.

How did we do it?

Target themes with high search volume and possibilities for business.

SEO applies to fresh material as well as to your current pages. As a result, you must choose themes with a high search traffic potential if you want your blog articles to produce regular and passive traffic.

Here's a brief example of how to obtain topic ideas for your blog if you sell tea online. Following tip #8 should have given you a clear notion on how to undertake keyword research.

Our free Keyword Generator accepts relevant keywords, such as "tea."

The Questions tab can be selected.

10. Consistently update your content

Not every blog article you write will succeed the first time around. That's alright. You may try again at any time. Rewrite it, then publish it again.

At Salty Red Dog Marketing, we practice this a lot. You can see that we have reprinted 80/300+ posts at least once by looking at the number of times we've done so.

But if you have hundreds of posts like we do, you can’t publish everything. That’s why you have to focus your efforts.

11. Use the same material on many platforms

It takes us a long time to produce each piece of content. To push "publish" and then completely ignore it would be a horrible waste. We prefer for it to advance as far as it can. And we achieve this by creating a single piece of information in a variety of forms.

For instance, we tweeted about when we updated our SEO checklist. After that, two months later, we tweeted the checklist itself, which was well-received.

12. Be listed among the "greatest X in Y" lists

There will always be "best X in Y" lists for businesses like yours, no matter where you are in the world.

If there are any relevant lists like this for your business, you want to be on them. Otherwise, you’re missing out on potential traffic, brand awareness, and customers.

13. Distribute items without charge

Everyone enjoys a freebie, but in order for them to be effective as a marketing strategy, they must be something that will draw in potential consumers.

This is the error that plenty of marketers commit. They give away something completely irrelevant to what they do, such as an iPhone or iPad, and then bemoan the fact that none of the individuals they attract end up becoming paying clients.

14. Be the face of your business

People don’t buy from businesses; they buy from people.

That’s why you shouldn’t be afraid to stand in the public eye and represent your brand and business.

But what if you’re publicity-shy?

Get one of your best employees to be the face of your business instead.

15. Be your company's face.

No charismatic workers around?

Not an issue. Influencers are a resource you can always use.

Influencers are those with a significant, engaged following (often on social media) and the power to persuade them to take a certain action.

They might be involved in one-time promotions or become brand ambassadors.

Additionally, it doesn't have to be pricey. You are not being urged to hire Jackie Chan to perform in your commercial. To launch your campaign, you may always collaborate with nano- and micro-influencers. Although they may have a lesser following, some influencers are more effective in persuading their followers to buy your goods.

16. Amplify well-liked social media posts

Over 1,000 people have liked and retweeted a tweet on an SEO checklist.

Was everything organic?

No. We gave it a paid boost after noticing that it was working well.

You can follow suit. Give one of your social media posts a boost if it's performing well. By doing so, you may expand your audience, increase brand recognition, and attract new clients.

17. Collaborate with others.

A past webinar in 2018 called "How to Get Website Traffic With Evergreen Content and Social Media Marketing," was produced in collaboration with Buffer, a social media scheduling platform.

While we weren't in a rivalry with one another. Buffer targeted social media marketers, while we mostly targeted SEOs. However, both teams are part of a bigger category known as "digital marketers," and they are able to utilize both of our solutions at once.

This made us the ideal team for working together.

You are able to follow suit. Find companies that cater to the same market as you but do not directly compete with you. For instance, you may collaborate with a nearby gym if you own a brand of healthy goods.

You may both access each other's audiences in this way. Win-win.

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Salty Red Dog Marketing, LLC is a marketing agency in Red Bank, NJ, Westport, CT, and everywhere in between. We service businesses with marketing strategies, digital marketing, social media, and consultations.

Contact: info@saltyreddogmarketing.com

Phone: NJ: (732) 802-6205 // CT: (203) 429-9671