Just 25 years ago, you could grow a business with positive word-of-mouth, great customer service, and referrals from loyal customers. The jury was still out on the internet, your customers didn’t shop online (remember when Jeff Bezos was mocked for trying to sell books online?), and social media didn’t even exist yet.

It’s a different world now; like it or not, digital has taken over. Cultivating a solid online presence and engaging strongly with current and prospective customers is key to building and maintaining a successful business in the digital world.

No, this isn’t a blog post about kitchen gadgets, but it might sound like it. Funnels. Flywheels. A veritable kitchen sink of digital marketing tactics.

You have been in the marketing world long enough to know about the concept of personas. These semi-fictional portraits of your best customer you are marketing to can help you write more inspired messaging as well as present this information in a way your ideal audience likes to see it. However, personas are only as good as the work that goes into creating them. An imagined persona with loose demographic information doesn’t give you the information you need to make a targeted marketing strategy. Instead, thorough research, detailed interviews and careful analysis of real data about your existing customers are essential to creating a persona that works for your business.

Wouldn’t it be great if all your customers were your best customers? No matter what industry you’re in, you probably have those potential clients and customers that your sales team loves to sell to and others that are … much harder for your sales team to see eye-to-eye with. By creating an ideal client profile, you can identify the type of person who tends to buy and be satisfied with your product.

Whether your business is a handful of people or hundreds, you have company data that is in a constant state of being updated, changed, or deleted in different computer systems, spreadsheets, and software packages. No wonder discrepancies occur and mistakes are made when information you thought was correct isn’t.

It’s never been so important to harness all company data or “digital knowledge,” clean it up, and maintain that cleanliness. It’s a big, important job, especially when it comes to sharing company information online. And incorrect information that’s already posted online also needs to be dealt with if your company wants to improve SEO rankings and keep up with the competition. If digital knowledge management isn’t on your radar, it should be. Here are five compelling reasons why:

https://blog.invervemarketing.com/is-digital-knowledge-management-part-of-your-marketing-strategy-5-reasons-it-should-be-for-the-sake-of-your-online-business-listing

There’s something insidious happening on the internet right now, and it’s affecting your business and your bottom line. You may be aware of it but haven’t found the time or the means to make it stop. Meanwhile, every day that it continues, you are losing business. This sinister beast is the duplication of your business data on business listing platforms like Yelp, Google My Business, Superpages, as well as on social media, maps, and apps. 

Have you ever searched “food near me” to find a potential lunch spot? Or googled a business to see if they’re open? Did you find these knowledge cards? Now, what happens when you search terms related to your business?

With Google knowledge cards’ direct answers to searches and the rise of voice search and AI technology like Siri and Alexa, more and more information is available without ever needing to visit a website. In fact, a study by Yext, a data management company, found that 73 percent of high-intent traffic happens outside of company websites. With this trend on the rise, it’s important to understand what information potential customers are finding so you can make it easy for them to get the information they’re actually looking for.