Marketing

DealCrunch and Submit Express Review the Next Year in Marketing

If you want to know which marketing trends are going to be the most important in 2017, a good person to talk to is Pierre Zarokian. He’s been in search marketing since 1998, when he founded Submit Express with the goal of improving the Google rankings for his clients. Since, he’s branched out into reputation management and helped hundreds of businesses improve their ratings, and revenue, with some simple fixes.

Step One: Reviews

Reviews are set to be one of the most important metrics of 2017, as Zarokian points out in this article with DealCrunch’s Sean Garrity. Positive reviews will be an important factor in customers coming to your location. Too many negative reviews may turn people away, even if you offer superior service to your competition. This is especially true for restaurants, where one poor experience publicized on a Yelp page can turn away dozens of potential customers.

You need to create a feedback loop for your business, capturing the customer’s reviews before they get to Yelp. Then, you can exercise a bit more control over what your profiles look like and what customers are saying about you. You can also have some negative reviews completely removed, if they fit certain criteria.

Step Two: Search Marketing

Google’s algorithm is constantly changing, and it’s not easy for small businesses to keep up. In the coming year, you’ll need to make sure your site is mobile friendly and that it conforms to modern standards for content and design. Next, you’ll need to look at which pages your customers are most likely to visit. These pages might be your most profitable pages, or some hidden gem you hadn’t considered before.

That’s the power of SEO. It helps you find untapped real estate, and improve its standing in search. Combined with a powerful social media presence, you’ll see long term success if you keep it up.