You’re not alone. It’s July now, and site owners are still reeling from the March core update that tanked website organic traffic and destroyed livelihoods—almost overnight.
In some cases, the update removed spammy sites of no actual use to anyone except the spammy owners. So, yay, Google!
But others weren’t spammy and somehow got caught up in this nightmare. They lost traffic for no obvious reason and tried working with Google to find an answer. Unfortunately, there was no answer to be found! They hadn’t done anything wrong, but still lost organic traffic.
If you’ve been watching over the last few years, organic traffic via Google became less and less prioritized. They demoted it further down the screen, below paid ads and their newer “People also ask” section. The video below is a great example of why people aren’t using Google as much as in the past:
Sure, my search phrase was generic—but it illustrates the point. Google has demoted organic search traffic. It means that, no matter how good your SEO is, you’re going to struggle with organic search results, especially if your traffic comes through Google.
If you’re like other companies on the ‘net, you’ve relied heavily on organic search and social media. These are great, especially a well-run social media account which also helps you build community.
But what happens when your primary social media platform changes its algorithm? Do you have to rebuild? Again?
What if I told you there was a better way?
Email Is the Way
If you collect customer emails already, this is a no-brainer. Except deciding on your budget. That might take a minute.
Here’s the thing, when you have your own email address list of people who gave you their email address, you’re already ahead of the game. You don’t have to start from scratch, just decide on a few things:
- Focus
- Frequency
- Freebie
- Budget
Email Focus
By “email focus,” I mean, why are you suddenly sending past customers an email? What is in it for them? How will your message be useful?
Just blindly sending info on upcoming sales isn’t enough. Find a way to actually help them—whether it’s by educating on unexpected uses for your product, asking questions about what they want, or sharing a recent blog post.
In the beginning, you’ll have to experiment. That’s not completely true, you’ll always be learning and experimenting with what got people to open your email, then take the action you wanted them to take. But over time, you’ll get better at reading the crowd.
Frequency
How often will you send messages? For most companies, anything from once per week to once per month is fine, just be consistent. Your subscribers should be able to look at their calendar and go…”Hey! Must be the end of the month (or whenever), there’s my email from ABC Awesome!”
They should essentially be able to set their clock by your email frequency, or at least the date.
Freebie
This is optional, but nice step for people who sign up. Most of us get so much spam in our inbox that we’re hesitant to give out our email address. I know I don’t give out my business email address to them, just a gmail so all my ads can go there. Then, about once a week I go through it. Sometimes I keep some fun subject lines for future reference, while other emails are for products I’m actively interested in.
However, a freebie can be anything from an extra when they purchase to a pdf ebook. Just make sure it’s relevant to your list.
Budget
Decide how much you’ll spend per month. Your budget will be directly tied to your frequency and it’s okay to start with a lower amount and build up.
Email budgets for small businesses to hire a freelancer start at a few hundred dollars per month and go up from there, depending on everything you want included/handled. Could you hire someone in-house? Sure. But unless you have other relevant work for them to do, it’s more cost effective to hire a freelancer to take care of business for you.
SEO Promises, Email Promises…
I’m not promising instant success. Email and SEO are both important and take time to see results. What I can promise is that proper SEO and great content will eventually win out and your pages will move up the SERPs. Will they be on page one? That’s the goal, but search engines like Google are notoriously fickle and change things up regularly.
Will email help grow your business? Probably. But, just like SEO, it’s not a quick-fix. It takes time to build your email list, then build trust. However, I can tell you that the money you spend on cultivating your email list will pay off in the long run. The folks at HubSpot put the ROI of email marking at $36 for every dollar spent on email.
I will never promise instant success, top of the SERPs, or anything else unreasonable. You’ll always get my best and we’ll work together to achieve long-term growth and success—whether I’m sitting with you or on my living room floor.
