Visibility is Everything
Whether you’re in the travel business or in real estate sales, being discovered is paramount.
And I’m reminded of what SparkToro’s well-known CEO and co-Founder, Rand Fishkin said recently — that discovery is the next big marketing objective, ahead of clicks. Because as he puts it, being inside the ecospheres of Google and Facebook creates tremendous brand exposure. He seems to believe that brand awareness sticks, while clicks don’t guarantee immediate sales. It’s better to build a cheaper, more lasting brand awareness to capture market leadership.
And consider that if Facebook and Google further reduce organic visibility, visibility and discoverability is all you have left.
And without reach and visibility, how can you be confident of your travel marketing and Realtor lead nurturing campaigns? Without consistent, reliable exposure on Google/Bing/Facebook, you can’t create a return visit, nor nurture their ongoing engagement, or convert that traffic to a profitable customer. Strong visibility generates many benefits including trust, confidence and willingness to pay more.
Travellers will be highly informed and conduct extensive research ahead of their trips. They’re not simply booking; they’re seeking confidence and reassurance in their decisions. 78% of U.S. consumers willing to pay more for a brand they know — Google Travel Insights.
Maximizing SEO and social visibility is about positioning and persistence in presenting your company, brand, and offer to win over customers and keep competitors and their offers out of sight.
Marketplaces are always on, and if you aren’t visible, your competitors are. If you’re seeing customer erosion, now you know why. Competitors are very good at creating pitches to swipe your customers. We need to stop that. If you’re spending time and money on creating sales and marketing content, doesn’t it deserve to be seen?
Build Your Own Wide Visibility Online
Anytime there’s an economic downturn, consumer search sags. And then those without their own visibility and lead system suffer. The big traffic aggregators grow their share in this situation, and begin auctioning off their low-quality, regurgitated leads to lead buyers. They keep the best leads for themselves.
Visibility is prestigious and provides proof. Google has a reputation for delivering the best, most relevant sites. Most consumers know this. Ask yourself if customers will buy from you if they never see links to your site? (and just to clarify, Google search remains the number one original source of leads. From those visits and when they become customers, they fill your email subscriptions as well. email lists are the result of a great SEO campaign.
Great SEO is advanced and well-supported – meaning market leaders make it a priority to be successful. They treat it with the utmost respect, putting SEO/Content on the front burner using high-quality, fresh, tasty ingredients guided by a savory recipe. That means the best blog posts, powerful landing pages, product pages, supported pillar content with strategic cluster content aligned by themes that even AI ranking systems love. Add customer testimonials, reviews, stories, original photography, videos and creative social media graphics and you’re getting a powerful message across to the right audience.
Your Brand New Plan for Increased Leads and Sales
You’re missing a great plan. And in this post, I want to give you a nice pep talk and remind you that planning and strategy leads to confidence and then audacity. If we’re smart, audacity pays off. It helps us get over big hurdles to do things competitors won’t. Those who act audaciously almost always win. Visualize the top track and field pole vaulters or the best downhill mountain bikers. They win with their increasing audacity which creates record-breaking performances.
Big visibility leads to audacity.
Why Online Visibility is Pivotal to Business Success
- generates leads and sales revenue
- big traffic volumes mean you don’t have to thread the needle or lower your price
- creates familiarity, trust and comfort
- gets your brand message to a wide audience
- gets your brand and offer to the very best prospects
- customer loyalty which keeps you in customers minds ahead of competitors
- establishes authority, preferred status, and likability
- creates the beautiful connection between your company and customers
- gives the persistence and nurturing to move the prospect to a sale
- feed more into your social networks and email lists
Great Content that Ranks Widely
Yes, it’s a moving target, but if you hire an SEO/Content Strategist, you can engineer a presence that doesn’t come and go with the tide. It’s designed and engineered to win at multiple levels and as consumers change their search preferences. For instance, world travelers are avoiding vacations in the US, and Americans are traveling domestically.
Expert SEO not only plans for this, it excels on the changes, and capitalizes on it, to strengthen rankings for core keywords too! It’s all about parlaying any customer demand and habit occurring into more visibility and better Google rankings. Plan a solid SEO strategy and we won’t have to dilly-dally every day as most amateurs do.
As an example of visibility power are two local Realtors in my region, male and female. 15 years ago, I forecasted that the team model would dominate going forward in real estate sales. These two Realtors show it has happened. They dominate their sales regions, to the point where most real estate signs seen locally and in Internet ads are theirs. that visibility brings fortifies their continued leadership and the rest lie in anonymity.
They’ve built enormous Realtor teams creating their own pyramid schemes (I don’t think they’d like me calling it that😊. They own the market in a 60-mile radius and they’re expanding. They don’t know limits.
What you need is an affordable approach. However, to free up funds for that, you may have to rearrange your budget and reorganize operations being smart in creating a winning team. Because underfunding SEO is deadly – it means the effort isn’t supported enough to make it work. There is tough competition that wants what you want.
Yikes, the Market is Failing so What Do I Do?
You’re wondering why your lead flow is so weak. Well, real estate searches are down 50% from 5 years ago yet buyers and sellers still search on Google. And this graph shows search for travel remains strong. It’s actually up from the pre-pandemic period.
It’s almost certain that your services/products are not available via the top web and social platforms – or not visible under the right circumstances. And there’s specific situations too such as when Google users type in “real estate agent + city name” and your competitor is listed, or when a travel agency is nowhere to be found for “best US vacations” or “all inclusive resorts Mexico.”
Leads don’t come in via a tiny tube pipeline. Visit analytics shows leads and sales arrive via many different keyword searches. Top of funnel (TOFL) which you must master, involves hundreds of thousands of topics. One of my clients in one year, drew visitors from more than 100,000 unique keyword search queries. For major real estate listing portals and travel marketplaces it might be 1 million unique keyword phrases.
Without that traffic, they would not be market leaders.
Of course, without strong SEO and relevant, specific quality content on your website, and promotion on social media channels, you’re not in the game, and you’re not going to win.
As the economy really picks up next year, you should be out ahead and ready to dominate — not playing catch up which is a brutal way to run a business. You’re in business to make money and remain in business. SEO and content strategy are keys to a confident future.
They Search for their Dreams
Customers are actively searching using an infinite array of phrases depending on what phase of the buying journey they’re in and the key benefits they’re after. They don’t buy right away as you know. The consideration phase is weeks to months.
They’re searching for their perfect vacation or dream home. If your content aligns with that perfect vision, both customers and AI algorithms are going to find you relevant -– even the most significant provider.
So making your content consistent, persistent, fresh and eager to greet them is vital. If you’re not showing up in the top search results, customers just don’t get the impression you’re the most credible provider. Not being there stains your brand. And I’ve heard consumers express disappointment that a company isn’t visible on Google. They wonder what’s wrong. The customer’s confidence fades when they think about the company’s anonymity. They believe visibility is a statement directed at them about their choice of brands. Unpopular, unseen says plenty.
Ramping Up Visibility
Businesses survive by growing, innovating, and staying in tune with the current market, and anticipating the future market. Ramping up reach, visibility and traffic gives you access to hard-to-reach customers and with a wide net, you catch great prospects.
My real estate marketing packages or travel marketing service packages aim to build great content and make that highly visible. It gets your brand seen and in the best possible light. When Google searchers see greatness right away, it ramps up their interest and intent with fewer of them bouncing, never to return. Good engagement will bring them back again to complete their purchase.
When Rifle Shots Miss
Something to think about is that rifle strategies via tiny pipelines often miss. Then you’re left with nothing. It’s always better to have backup sources, angles, audiences, strategies, and tactics just in case your audience of one prospects don’t feel you’re the one for them. Having backup visibility and extra presence gives you and your marketing team the confidence – that they can fail and then use analytics to find out what is actually not optimal about your brand and offer.
Make a commitment to building fantastic, original, authentic content and letting me organize it to dominate Google search results and then amplify it via social media channels.
Whether hotels or agencies and DMOs and tour companies, you’ll see profound results in visits. You’ll also have your own owned lead gen system. Build and present a better value proposition for prospects at any phases of the buying journey – including keeping your customers loyal.
A dedicated SEO/Content Strategist is the most powerful asset you have at your disposal.
See the opportunity and pounce on it now! Tomorrow’s not far away.
* title image courtesy of Freepik.com
