SEO is search engine optimization. And that involves the process of editing both onsite and off-site website elements to improve your chances of showing up higher in search engine results pages for important keywords. And the reason why SEO is so important is that it is such a major driver of traffic and is often the first time where your potential  clients and customers can find out about your services for the first time. 

Thus, if you're able to show up on the top of Google and Bing for profitable keywords, it's very, it's very helpful because then you can drive more awareness and get people to go further through your Black-Owned business website, and take positive actions such as filling out a form, watching a video, or downloading a quality piece of content, in exchange for their contact information, otherwise known as a Lead Magnet.  

You can write all the great content in the world and have it be structured the right way, have keywords in the right area, and be linking out to other high-quality websites; nevertheless, if you don't have other websites that are related in nature and linking in and providing you a boost to raise you in the search engine results pages, then all of your SEO efforts, is not as effective because Google looks at the backlink profile of the pages, on your business website very closely. 

The more high-quality backlinks you have coming in, on a weekly or monthly basis to specifically targeted pages, the better your Black-Owned business website will perform in Google and Bing.

Social Media Marketing is a way for Black-Owned businesses to interact with current and prospective clients and customers in a social and natural way. This is typically done on bigger sites like Facebook or Linked In or Twitter. But it can also be done on smaller niche sites that are built more around the community. Social media is like a town hall, it's a place where people go to see their families or to catch up with friends, share stories, even discuss today's latest breaking news or educate themselves. 

People don't want to be handed a flyer with your sales pitch on it. People want to discuss and engage in things that are relevant to them and that are interesting to them. This in essence, is a chance for Black-Owned Businesses to get in touch with these prospects, that are essentially coming in through their sales pipeline, and provides the opportunity for them to reach out to people that may not know anything about them. It thus provide a greater opportunity to discuss what's important to them, to engage in these conversations and to have real discussions about real things that matter to the individual. 

Social Media Marketing can serve every stage of the buying cycle. To me, there are really two aspects that stand out the most. 

The first one is the awareness stage, which is where clients or prospects might not know anything about your Black-Owned business, you're really just trying to get yourself out in front of them. And so you're trying to engage in conversations with them, or you're trying to just find places where they're talking about things that are related to your company. So you reach out to them, and you just make them aware of your company. 

The second aspect is kind of on the other end of the spectrum, which is more of the customer relations side of things, whether that's support, or just turning your existing clients, your most loyal ones into brand advocates or brand ambassadors. 

If there's one thing to remember with social media marketing, it's to be real. Be yourself and have a personality. People don't want to engage with something stiff or just a logo. They want to engage with a human. So be a human being, be natural and be social, and your business will reap the benefits. 

Content Marketing is blogs, it's ebooks, podcasts, videos, it's anything that you can realistically consume. On a more kind of philosophical level, what it really comes down to is providing free or additional value to your Black-Owned business’s target audience. One of my favorite forms of content marketing is utilizing the power of voice, both in podcasts, vlogs, audio blogs, and other rich media. If you are listening to this, you are a testament that it indeed works.  

I think that content does three things primarily provides inspiration, it provides information, and it is entertaining. And there's always going to be overlap. Each of those plays a very important role in helping to solve your prospective client's pain points through the free content that you share and provide. If it's new information, perhaps it's providing a new piece of data that allows them to make an informed decision, perhaps that informed decision is buying your products and services. Your  products and services would of course be their best option,  as you would have established yourself as the specialist or thought-leader in your particular area of business or expertise.

If it's inspiration, maybe it's showing them what they can accomplish, when they actually address that pain point with that new information that they have. Of course, it has to be entertaining, because our attention span as business professionals continues to become shorter and shorter as technology advances. Thus your content needs to be engaging so that your audience can remain glued and focused on your message. Many people believe the following sentiment… Okay, I'm gonna put this blog out there, it's super high quality, it's this great story, it's great information... and then everyone's gonna find it on the internet. 

Sorry to say it...but it doesn't quite work that way. You have to allow people to share it, you have to distribute it on social media or on other distribution platforms. There are a number of options to choose from both paid and organic, so you need to make sure that the content is being distributed in a way that your audience can find it. It’s not only crucial for you to understand why you are distributing your content but even more importantly, to know how it's working and why it's working. 

If you're looking at bounce rate, or you're looking at traffic, or whatever it is, that's going to be a very, very different kind of measurement than if you're trying to measure for retention, and how your existing users are engaging with the content that you already have. If  Digital Marketers are defining their content success metrics or KPIs in a more specific way, then they'll be able to actually measure the kind of success that they're looking for.

If you're doing user experience design every time you ask yourself the question, can this be easier? It begins by putting yourself in your user, or your Black-Owned business's customers's shoes. So one of the words that user experience designers talk about a lot is empathy.

I always put myself in the shoes of my Black Empowered Marketing Agency Clients, I always think from their perspectives about what they need, how I can help them to solve their problems. So by solving their problems, I am also helping the business to grow as a Digital Marketing professional.  And that's really the start of any good product or service....which is building a positive experience. 

The beginning of any good design process is to ask yourself, What do my Black-Owned business clients or customers need? 

What are their pain points, and how can my Black-Owned Business help them overcome an issue they're having today?

Everything they see, and every feeling they have on your website, and marketing campaigns is all user experience, and can thus have a tremendous potential influence on whether or not a client or customer will choose your Black-Owned Business, or your competitor.  

PPC or Pay per click advertising is essentially a form of bidding on an auction. It's also referred to as CPC, or cost per click. And it's opposed to things like CPM, which is cost per mil, which is paying based on 1000 impressions of your Black-Owned Business’s Google, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn ads. There is also, cost per view that's used on YouTube or other video networks that you pay based, again, on usually 1000 views of your video for example. 

PPC kind of became a term that was outside of the auction, and it was basically more just about the type of advertising and not necessarily the auction itself. So people started calling some agencies, PPC agencies, or I do PPC and that sort of thing. More recently, PPC has kind of gone out of fashion and that people more accurately say, cost per click when they're actually referring to an auction, and then sem when they're talking about search engine marketing, because that's just more accurate, or SEO when they're talking about search engine optimization, which is not paid. 

We will go through Search Engine Marketing, and Search Engine Optimization elsewhere in the site, and we’ll explain why they both should play an important role in your overall Digital Marketing strategy, in order for you to maximize your Black-Owned Business’s overall results. 

Think about all the data that you know about the user, maybe that's the first time they've come to your Black Owned Business website or maybe they're a repeat user. In either case, that experience should be different and should be thus  emulated on the landing page. So if you have a landing page that you know is based on, whether they're a first-time user of your products and services, let them know more information, maybe serve them a video. Again, that's where that personalization aspect comes into it. Landing pages are critical to the first impression that you have with the user or a potential client for your Black-Owned business. We call this, the storefront mentality. 

Therefore, your Black-Owned Business’s landing pages should be dynamic enough, to capture the interests of the user immediately, and get them engaged either through videos, quality downloadable content, or some other call to action that will guide them down your sales funnel. 

Landing Page Optimization for your Black-Owned Business is almost like carving a statue in a way. Where you sort of have an idea about what the perfect landing page is going to look like for your business. And thus slowly, you make all the little cuts until this shape begins to emerge. 

Similar to a sculptor's never-ending quest for perfecting his or her sculptor, as a Digital Marketer, you should be constantly making the little changes that are needed, and measuring the results of those changes, in order to maximize your Law Firm’s conversions.

Some professionals in Digital Marketing get stressed out when it comes to AB Testing, as a lot of people think about multi-variant testing that it is trying to work with multiple variants on a web page, digital marketing ad, or other activation, instead of just testing perhaps two things. 

At BEMA, we believe that A/B Testing is about looking for instance at a title on a page or an image, and then asking the question of whether or not that image or title is going to help potential clients make a decision about opting in or whatever the goal or main call to action is of that specific campaign. 

Changing around the variables, colors, headlines, and experimenting with different call-to-action verbiage, is what we feel AB testing is about. My advice to you and your internal Marketing Team is to start really simple. Pick one thing, test it and make sure the sample size is large enough to give you a meaningful result, and thus provide you with actionable steps to help achieve better results for your Black-Owned Business.