Homegrown Resources

Sharing the knowledge that helps us grow.

Introduction - Growth in Action
Building Your Customer Avatar: Who is your Ideal Customer?
Streamline Your Social Media for Better Customer Experience
Are you Utilizing Google My Business to its Full Potential?
Turn Your Website into the Ultimate Sales Tool
5 Tips to Build A Strong SEO Strategy for your Website

Growth in Action

Is Your Business Ready for More?

Right now, today, at this very moment, there are a few things to consider when elevating your business. How much time and effort are you willing to set aside for those crucial tasks that always seem to take a backseat. If you’re in a pinch, maybe skip ahead to the “Ready to Get Started?” part, and we’ll handle getting those 5 things done for you quickly.

In this ebook, we’ll share 5 things every company should consider before hiring (our) agency to leverage your business and take it to the next stage.

Verify + update your Google Business listing
Identify your ideal customer
Consolidate your social media accounts
Run a basic SEO audit
Take an honest look at your website

The journey to building a better business begins with planting the seed today. Let us help you prioritize the initiatives you can tackle right now before hiring an agency.

- Chris Nault

Grow Better, Together

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Building Your Customer Avatar: Who is your Ideal Customer?

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Before you charge ahead with your marketing plans, do you know who you are marketing to? Every business should have a solid understanding of their ideal customer. When you know your customer’s goals, challenges, and preferences, you can better serve existing customers and more effectively target prospective customers. Your ideal customers are the center of an effective inbound marketing strategy, so let’s discuss the importance of knowing your target audience and what factors will drive strategic decision making.

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Characteristics of Your Ideal Customer

Consider your buyer’s needs in relation to the product or service that you provide. What problem does your product solve? What challenge does your service eliminate? Answering these questions will uncover your buyer’s needs, and help you expand your exploration into the common traits, values, and stories. Here are some top characteristics to help you build a persona of your ideal customer:

If your business sells to consumers (B2C), buyer information may include:

Age
Gender
Marital status
Income
Occupation
Geographic location
Psychographics (attitudes, hobbies, beliefs, interests)
Media and technology preferences
Goals/challenges
Pain points

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If your business sells to other businesses (B2B), customer characteristics may include:

Industry
Location
Sales/revenues
Years in business
Number of employees
Budget
Goals/challenges
Pain points

Of course, not all personas will have answers to all questions but depending on the nature of your company, you are very likely to have more than one ideal customer. Gathering all of your information together and focusing on their buyer behavior will then help you identify, target, and align your marketing and sales efforts that speak clearly to your ideal customer(s). Rather than broadcasting your marketing messages to the entire world – an expensive proposition even in today’s digital landscape, you can concentrate your resources to attract the right people. That is what the Growth way is all about, placing the right message, in front of the right person, at the right time.Attract and Empower Your Customers with Growth

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When you discover your initial ideal customer it should impact the thinking about your basic business model and overall business strategy. Imagine creating a Facebook or Google Ad for your perfect customer. How would you describe this customer? Who is the most likely to buy your product or service immediately? What are the most important qualities that your ideal customer would have? All great business models are customer focused and considering how these questions can impact your business offerings, distribution channels and pricing, identifying your ideal customers will help your business become more profitable and successful.

Ready to take your inbound strategies to the next level?

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Streamline Your Social Media for Better Customer Experience

With dozens of social media platforms vying for attention, it's no wonder that business owners are unsure where to focus their social media efforts. Fortunately, you don’t need to have a profile on every single platform in order to have a successful social media marketing strategy. Consistency across the right social media channels is key to building a cohesive, unified marketing strategy. To start streamlining your social media, select the two or three platforms that best align with your brand and ideal customer. In addition to reaching your target audience more effectively, you will also be better positioned to build brand awareness, familiarity, and trust among your current and potential customers.

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The Benefits of Streamlining Your Social Media Accounts

Ask a business owner with a strong online presence, and they’ll tell you, content marketing is one of the quickest, most successful ways to increase organic traffic. By streamlining your brand presence and seeing what works best for your audience, your business may see the following benefits:

Improved customer experience

Better brand consistency

Ability to focus on the highest ROI accounts

Increased visibility and profitability

As more and more marketing channels begin to overlap and play on one another, using your platforms consistently, will help you engage wherever your audience invests their time and attention.

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You’ve heard the adage: time is money. This is the case with streamlining social media, as well. Save time and money by managing your social media content under one roof, and ensure your content is working together cohesively. At Growth, we offer a full range of strategic marketing services. If there is one thing we know when it comes to creating high-quality content, it’s this: success starts with planning and strategy. Are all of your social media platforms aligned? Do they present your brand and your value in a way that your audience "gets it"? Get the winning tools that are essential to having a cohesive presence across all social accounts.

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Are you Utilizing Google My Business to its Full Potential?

There are so many ways to increase awareness for your brand, business, or company. But when it comes to your business’s online presence, putting your best foot forward matters. With Google My Business (GMB) being an efficient and helpful tool for businesses to use, many may not realize that they’re holding their listing back by not utilizing it properly. How do you know if you’re doing everything right? There are key things to know about utilizing the full potential of your listing, including:

The benefits of claiming your GMB listing
How to verify your business on Google
How to optimize your profile properly

With so many edits made to Business Profiles each month, our agency knows how important it is to quickly make changes so that our business information on Google is verified, engaging, and up-to-date. It’s easy, free, and incredibly tactful, so any business can implement this initiative right now!

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The Benefits of Claiming Your GMB

Although most of this information can likely be found on your website, Google My Business indexes the content you provide for consistency across Google Search and Maps. But it’s not just a place to find basic information about your business. When used correctly, Google My Business is a powerful tool that can increase your revenue and provide valuable insights about your customers. Yes, it helps your customers find your business faster online, but here’s how your business can benefit the most from this free tool.

Claiming your profile allows you to control the information that Google displays. By claiming your GMB profile, you can verify and edit all the information about your business as it appears on Google.
GMB listings allow you to appear in a geographical search. Have you ever used a “near me” search on Google Maps? Google Maps is skilled in finding business locations, and GMB listings are displayed prominently in Google Maps search results. That gives you several opportunities to attract new business.
Google reviews are necessary for today’s consumers and it helps with reputable management. It is easily noted that a large online reputation management component is embedded in GMB. That’s why it’s so important to utilize a platform that both captures and allows you to respond to customer reviews. Whether engaging with positive or negative reviews, it shows that your brand or business cares about your customers’ satisfaction in which we believe is huge in winning business.
Your GMB listing can increase your website SEO. If you’re not familiar with SEO, or search engine optimization, have a look at an SEO resource we put together that redefines why SEO is a useful tool. By claiming your GMB profile, you’re adding quality web links that lead consumers back to your website.
GMB has helpful insights and customer analytics. Being able to discover how your customers found you and what actions they took, helps your business determine which type of information they are looking for.
Google keeps you up-to-date with new features for GMB. Business longevity is a big factor in consumer trust and reputation. Staying up-to-date with new integrations such as showing “X Years in Business’ on your profile shows authenticity to your business and customers.

Optimizing Your GMB Listing

for Better Ranking and Visibility

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While there are many benefits to claiming a Google My Business listing, let’s remember that before Google My Business, it wasn’t long ago the Yellow Pages was the most practical way to find businesses. Now with Google My Business essentially being the equivalent of a business listing in the Yellow Pages, its main purpose is to compliment your existing website by giving it a public identity and presence on Google. At Growth, we are here to make your Google My Business profile work for you in the most efficient and productive method, and in order to do so, you have to optimize it. Here are a few quick and easy tips that we mentioned earlier this year:

Ask satisfied customers to rate your product or service
Keep your business information up-to-date
Leverage the tool to get in touch with your existing customers and potential new customers
Publish updates regularly, such as product or company announcements, press releases, events, blog articles, or your latest promotions

When you have finally set up and optimized your GMB listing, taking into account these tips, you’ll have access to Google My Business Insights which provides detailed information on how and where consumers are searching for your business. Combining this with your website’s Google Analytics data creates a powerful overview of how people find your website and listing and the actions they take afterward.

Google My Business Is Helping You, So Stay Updated with Growth

This year with more business owners relying on digital tools to connect with their customers and potential businesses, we understand the initiatives it takes in elevating your online presence. Our expert advice to any new prospective client or business is to create a high-quality and responsive website that represents their business well, then shift focus to optimizing their Google My Business profile, ensuring that it’s the first to be updated with correct business info. As an agency, we will continue to update our solutions to be as helpful as possible because updating your online presence is just one win to claim before “Hiring a Growth Agency”. If you have any questions about how we can help you get your Google house in order sooner rather than later, give us a shout.

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Turn Your Website into the Ultimate Sales Tool

If you’re like most marketers, you know there are a multitude of tools out there built specifically to help with certain aspects of inbound marketing. But which ones are right for you? If you’re wondering if your website is the best sales tool? It should be. For many of your potential customers, their first initial interaction with your business will be through your website and many of those who don’t discover you online will look you up as part of their routine market research. On the other hand, for your current customers, your website will be their first expediency should they need to reach customer service, learn more about your services, or share your business amongst others. Given all these factors, turning your website into the ultimate sales tool will help reconstruct your thinking and use targeted channels to create forward momentum.

Turn Your Website into the Ultimate Sales Tool

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More Than A Business Card

There are many websites that never go beyond a homepage. And the key to turning your website into a sales tool is to anticipate your customers’ objections with the answers they need to get the ball rolling. If you don’t communicate that unique selling proposition in a clear, direct and persuasive way, the characteristics of what you’re offering, what makes you different from your competition, and the benefits customers can get from your services, the prospect won’t be able to see the value you’re offering. Think beyond a one-page design and provide your visitors with some room to explore because it is essential that you put the consumer first, not your brand.

Make Your Website an SEO Magnet

When people land on your webpage are they able to find what they’re looking for? Are they making the transition easily from visitor to conversion? Is the value you’re offering clear and centered? Unlike other sales tools, a website with good on-page SEO acts like a customer magnet, drawing in visitors who are searching for products and services like the ones you offer or simply enjoying their experience. A website that appeals to visitors correlates with high search engine rankings, so if your site meets these criteria, you’ll have a better chance of showing up in the results.

Building A Lead Generation Machine

The businesses that are thriving today, are those that have learned to create, build, and nurture relationships online. Having a website that is an effective sales tool allows your sales team to use the site to further educate prospects after a first call. Remember a clear value proposition across your whole website and the use of content and calls to actions is what helps engage the visitor from the moment they land on your page. It is then important to make sure that every page of the site pushes users towards either signing up for a service, requesting a quote, or joining your mailing list. Concentrating on driving quality traffic will help you make your lead generation as efficient as possible so that closing deals are performed at a higher rate.

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How to take ACTION

Now that you’ve developed a story to engage the audience on your website it’s time to move to the next step in the process–giving that audience something to do on your site. Walking your customer through the Call to Action cycle will make your website a lead producing asset for your business. The idea here is you need to make sure to develop varied CTAs and to position them in places that make sense for where your users are in their journey. Using this action approach will brand familiarity, build trust, and encourage customers to choose you. So make sure you take the time to manage your information properly.

Build Your Website into a Story

In our fast-paced digital world, everyone wants instant results. But at Growth “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.” Websites now play a fundamental role in the customer acquisition process and surprisingly a brand’s website engages more prospects on a daily basis. With a brand’s website being the first introduction a potential customer will have, here is a list of considerations in order to improve the conversion rate of your company’s website:

Discover your most effective CTAs and weave them into your story so they make sense contextually.
Provide useful information based on the needs of your users.
Keep the website design of high quality and keep the design contemporary in style to build trust.
Make it easy for customers to find the information they are looking for.
Make sure your information is up-to-date.
Be compelling. Your website must demonstrate why your brand is the right fit.
Make it easy to convert into a lead or buyer.
Offer a clear and compelling reason to purchase from your brand.
Improve drop off points. Study your website analytics and user journey flows to find drop off points.
Ensure your website adapts to desktop, tablet, and mobile devices and is user friendly

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At Growth, we know the importance of responsive websites that immerse and amaze. Crafting a great website takes a dedicated team that understands the importance of your vision and can turn that idea not only into a source of engaging content online but an undefeated sales engine. With your website being the hub for all revenue-generating activity, It takes a lot of internal coordination, hard thinking, good writing, vital graphic design skills to make your website a powerful sales tool and that is what our team excels at. If you recognize that your website needs a new design to make that kind of impact, contact us. We would love to help put your website to work for you.

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5 Tips to Build A Strong SEO Strategy for your Website

The question on just about every SEO’s mind right now is “How is the new normal impacting their SEO metrics? With the pandemic impacting every industry in some form, ranging from complete shutdowns to massive increases in buying in certain sectors, our team is committed to helping your business succeed and that begins with a fully-optimized website. As we continue to pivot these new waters ourselves, we have turned to our 5 best tips that not only helped revamp our website but how it can improve traffic to your website. But improving your SEO isn’t a process you want to simply jump into without a strategy in mind. Therefore, the best first step in developing your SEO strategy is conducting an SEO analysis. Start here.

EX 3

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Your SEO Planning Starts Now

1. Perform an SEO Audit & Keyword Research

First things first, you need to perform an SEO audit to showcase all the opportunities on your site that you can address to improve your ranking potential. The insights you gain will then give you direction on where you can improve your site's content and technical aspects to deliver a better experience for new and returning visitors. Whether you are working with e-commerce or another site, you want your pages to rank for the most appropriate search terms that people are actually using. Using this roadmap, our team can easily create SEO strategies that will set your business up for success.

2. Make your Website’s Structure Clear, Intuitive and Up-to-Date.

SEO is a tested branding tool and in even in times of a pandemic, that still remains the case. Having an intuitive navigation will work for your visitors as it will help them find what they came for in the least amount of time possible. If your site is structured well, all the pages and subpages will be easily found and indexed by search engine crawlers.

3. Improve Your Presence on Social Media

On the surface, the goal of SEO optimization is to improve your site’s rankings in search results. But beyond that, the purpose of achieving high rankings is to attract more traffic and to convert that traffic into customers and leads. Streamlining your social media accounts will increase brand exposure by boosting local SEO. Using external links across all platforms allows people to share your content. The shares, likes, and comments your posts receive are vital signals which Google and other search engines use to rank your website that indicate your posts are useful to your target market.

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4. Make SEO friendly UI/UX

The goal of any experienced SEO is to establish a strong foundation for a beautiful website with a clean, effective user experience that is easily discoverable in search and in mobile design. If knowing your audience’s intent is one side of the SEO ladder, delivering it in a way search engine viewers can find and understand is the other. This means creating a user-friendly experience by analyzing bounce rate regularly, improving site's navigation and crafting headings that create a curiosity in the user to read further. With Google learning how to decipher a favorable or unfavorable user experience, positive user experience has become a crucial element to any website’s success.

5. Analyze and Create Engaging Content

Content plays a huge role in the SEO of your website. Why? Because that’s where your consumers are looking for answers. Content is an on-page SEO factor that helps boost your search engine optimization. Google considers great content one of its top 3 ranking factors, so it’s crucial that businesses invest in producing and publishing great content on a regular basis in order to build trust. Remember, great SEO strategies are built on the bedrock of engaging content.

Learn More About the Latest SEO Techniques

SEO strategies can seem like a completely foreign concept. For many businesses it’s easy to fall into the trap of neglecting your SEO strategies and focusing entirely on more surface-level marketing tactics. But your business website needs to be SEO’d, not just once, but continually. Metrics are constantly changing, and it’s critical to stay on top of your place in the rankings. With organic reach on digital platforms such as social and search in decline, the tips above show that SEO has some great benefits in the long run for your business. And with the right SEO tools, our team can help you get the information you need to guide a smart SEO strategy for your website.

So if you’ve been wondering why your site needs search engine optimization, the answer is clear: it’s one of the best ways to reach your marketing goals. Get in touch with us today!

Ready to Grow?

Use this checklist to supercharge your business’s growth. Visit our website or book a meeting today at no cost and find out if we're the right fit for your business.

Remember - if you’re ready to take your company to the next level, do these 5 things before you hire an agency:

Verify + update your Google Business listing
Identify your ideal customer
Consolidate your social media accounts
Run a basic SEO audit
Take an honest look at your website

Share the knowledge with your friends and colleagues

Hom​egrown Resources

Growth in ​Action

Building Your Customer Avatar: Who is your Ideal Customer?

Characteristics of Your Ideal Customer

Streamline Your Social Media for Better Customer Experience

The Benefits of Streamlining Your Social Media Accounts

Are you Utilizing Google My Business to its Full Potential?

The Benefits of Claiming Your GMB

Optimizing Your GMB Listing

Turn Your Website into the Ultimate Sales Tool

More Than A Business Card

Make Your Website an SEO Magnet

Building A Lead Generation Machine

How to take ACTION

Build Your Website into a Story

5 Tips to Build A Strong SEO Strategy for your Website

Your SEO Planning Starts Now

1. Perform an SEO Audit & Keyword Research

2. Make your Website’s Structure Clear, Intuitive and Up-to-Date.

3. Improve Your Presence on Social Media

4. Make SEO friendly UI/UX

5. Analyze and Create Engaging Content

Learn More About the Latest SEO Techniques

​Ready to Grow?

Homegrown Resources

Growth in Action

Ready to Grow?