New services like Yext and Visual Visitor have a lot to offer those that want to break into digital marketing. Do you know how to harness these services and boost your business’ presence online?

It can be difficult for small and medium-sized businesses to maintain a visible and relevant profile. Marketing costs can often eat through your budget without achieving any real results, and traditional publicity methods are becoming less and less effective.

That’s why digital marketing is becoming more and more popular. From affiliate links to SEO, keyword optimization to lead generation, digital marketing has never been bigger.

After all, paying for a billboard isn’t going to do much for you when 82% of smartphone shoppers are using “near me” searches to make their next purchase.

You have to get in the game – but managing your digital marketing independently is a gargantuan task. In order to develop your SEO, manage your brand, optimize your social media presence and more, you’d need an entire team working around the clock.

Isn’t there a better way?

How Can You Break Into Digital Marketing?

A simple way to kickstart your digital marketing efforts is to select a few key services that will help automate tasks and minimize the workload on your end. With the right tools, you can maximize the return you get on a small investment of time and money.

Where should you start? Consider Yext and Visual Visitor.

What Is Yext Used For?

Yext is a location data management software that automatically syncs your information across 50+ major local directories and search engines. Yext lets you store, manage, edit, customize, and sync information about your locations across all Yext products, including Business Name, Address and Phone Number (NAP).

What’s the point?

There are a lot of different directories in use across the Internet. While a majority of searches go through Google, not all of them do. And let’s be honest, every new client counts, so you don’t want to lose one that can’t find your information.

Normally, you would have to manually go through each and every local business directory in order to make sure that you show up on the first page of Google in local results associated with searches about your industry.

However, with Yext, you make one update, and all those directories are updated. This is a powerful tool when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You need to have consistent information if you expect Google to list you in its search results.

Yext manages more than 65 local business directories, with major websites including:

  • Apple
  • Bing
  • Facebook
  • Foursquare
  • Google
  • MapQuest
  • Waze
  • Yahoo
  • Yelp

Again, this is about bang for your buck. By simply setting up your Yext account, you automatically have all your data synced with 65+ local business directories.

What Is Visual Visitor And How Does It Work?

In today’s digital era, consumers will often Google a company as their first step in making any purchase. As such, an outdated or non-existent web presence can severely damage a business’ chance of being that consumer’s choice.

However, even if you have a well-designed and visually appealing website, it won’t amount to much if you can’t convert that visitor into a customer. And it’s all about that conversion – even if it’s just a matter of getting them to email you, fill out a form, or sign up for your newsletter.

That opens the door for you to follow up with them. However, if they don’t interact, you can’t follow up. Unless you’re using Visual Visitor – an anonymous website visitor identification and monitoring tool and lead generation service. It assists businesses in tracking leads, evaluating them, and following up on them.

This service is also integrated with popular data sources like LinkedIn, which allows it to provide accurate contact information for these leads, should you decide to follow up with them. It also identifies repeat visitors, so your sales team can hone in on those most likely to become new clients.

How Should You Approach Digital Marketing?

No matter what, don’t try to do it “from scratch”.

Managing digital marketing independently and manually is overly expensive and won’t guarantee results. For your first foray into digital marketing, try out a few of these tools that take a little bit of time and money, and are more likely to net you a few new leads.

Like this article? Check out the following blogs to learn more:

The Need for Cybersecurity Expertise at the Board Level for Banking

The new Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices (HICP)

NIST’s Small Business Cybersecurity Corner