Marketing Growth Strategies

Successful businesses know that they have to keep up with the latest trends to maintain their competitive advantage. Small Business Trends shares some marketing growth strategies that could help your school to prosper:

1. Mobile dominance. Over the past few years, mobile has overtaken desktop in usage and search—especially among younger users. As a result, there was a big push in 2016 for small businesses to ensure that their websites were optimized for mobile browsing. (Note that, as your traffic safety education curriculum provider, Traffic Safety Consultants, Inc., develops sites and courses that are mobile-friendly!) You might also consider looking into alternative payment methods, such as Square, to help you collect tuition from students of your classroom-based courses on-site at the time of the class.
2. Data-informed decision-making. Much has been made lately about "big data" and the need for business to become "data-driven." But most organizations—especially small ones—lack the sophisticated and expensive tools needed to fully embrace this strategy. But data doesn't always know best; insights from data analysis should be paired with your existing knowledge base and the opinions of experienced team members. You should, however, always track the effectiveness of your efforts, and be willing to make changes as needed to ensure success.
3. Better blogging and social media. You may already regularly be generating content for your website and/or social media accounts. But audiences are starting to notice the difference between noise and valuable posts. If your content isn't helpful and exciting, you'll have trouble getting customers and prospects to engage. And don't forget to monitor the data on the effectiveness of your marketing and advertising activities to improve the performance of your next campaign.

The original article offers some further tips. Check it out to learn how to get your school on the path to marketing success!

SEO and Title Tags

A well-directed search engine optimization (SEO) strategy could be your best—and most economical—shot for reaching the greatest number of customers for your business. Both online and on your website, you can start information flowing to the people who need it most. The key to success, after all, does rest with the customer.

What is SEO?

SEO works by increasing the visibility of your Website in the search results of Bing, Google, and other live search engines. Think of it as providing an actionable and verifiable link to customers. By writing content with keywords most often used by people searching for traffic school—such as defensive driving or traffic violator school—you can increase your site's position and make it more visible to users.

SEO isn't simply crafting content with words and phrases relevant to a topic, such as online traffic school. It's also demonstrating how important your website is compared to others. If your traffic school promotes safe driving skills through hilarious online learning, then your website should explain why your comedy curriculum is the best on the Web.

Don't forget to include links to authority sites, which can bolster your site's credibility and drive SEO. Public safety announcements from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration are a great example, and are easy to obtain.

The Benefits of SEO

Increase your Website's position on search results pages through concise, eye-popping page titles. Title tags are designed to help users searching for information on a specific topic to better determine whether to clicking through to your site will help them or not.

To create an effective title tag, include the name of your website, along with a succinct designation that effectively describes the page's content. For instance, "Online Traffic School – Try Our Hilarious Course Today" could work for an online school that offers a comedic safe-driving course. The title tag is highly specific and concisely explains what readers can expect should they follow the link. In addition, a driver hoping to mask a citation on his driving record might use the keywords traffic school during a search query.

Winning Through SEO

Effective search engine optimization (SEO) is about designing and executing a strong marketing plan. While you may not be an expert in SEO strategy, your website can benefit from a few simple tips. Check out these suggestions to see where you might be able to improve your online marketing strategies:

1. Create a click-friendly URL scheme using keywords that relate to each designated Web page. The URL http://www.onlinetrafficschool.com/registration is a perfect example. Here, users understand that by following the link, they are going to the registration page of Online Traffic School.
2. Create a navigation structure that makes it easy for users to move through your website. Offering a site map, for instance, could help users more quickly and more efficiently find key Web pages, such as FAQs and registration.
3. Stick to well-polished, well-researched content that is of benefit to your customers. You don't want to give your customers any reason to "opt-out" of future engagement and correspondence.
4. Link your website—or select Web pages—back to your social media pages.
5. Print the name of your website on the back of business cards, and other printed material. Or better yet, consider making the name of your business a URL, as we've previously discussed on this blog.
6. As with any SEO plan, you want to make your website as user-friendly as possible. Whether you anchor text (making it clickable for users to see as a result of a link) or optimize your content through colorful illustrations and eye-popping videos (which, by the way, drives up SEO!) your goal for your content should be the same: to present quality material that keeps customers interested and coming back for more!
7. Consider using Google Analytics or another service for site statistics. Track how much "natural" traffic you're now attracting through search queries and which keywords are driving this traffic. Then, reuse successful strategies in the future.

SEO and Meta Tags

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process by which you drive traffic to your Website using keywords and other content enhancement techniques. This is not to be confused with Pay per Click (PPC), which drives clicks (i.e., readership) through paid placements, such as ads and banners. The purpose in either case is to drive visitors—and potential customers—to your site.

SEO Priorities

Meta tags are text that is invisible to readers of the site but which is accessbile by search engines. Meta tags are included in a Web page's meta data (information about the page itself; not the information that is presented to visitors to the page) directly below the page's title tag, and they offer a straightforward technique for effectively driving SEO priorities. These short, descriptive tags accurately summarize the content that the page is presenting for consumption and, if done right, could drive clicks.

Here are a few tips for writing eye-popping meta tags:

• Don't just inform users about a page's content. Entice them to follow the link.
• Draw users into your site with wit and humor. Veer away from dry descriptions that do little more than provide information. Instead, create a picture of what users can expect inside the website.
• Create a unique meta tag—meaning it has its own description—for each page on your Website.

Using a well-directed SEO plan, you can ensure that your Website appears high in search engine results and gets presented to consumers who might be looking for your services. Meta tags are a critical part of your SEO campaign, but they're just a part. Keep checking back here periodically for more helpful tips on improving your search engine marketing campaign!

The Incredible, Expanding Customer Pool and How to Navigate it!

Don't get lost on the Web.
Make use of it in your marketing!

The pool of customers you enjoy today may not be the pool of customers you enjoy tomorrow; however, through effective grassroots marketing you can more effectively navigate the waters. As you "reel in" more customers, you'll need to widen your "net," and tighten your grip, making sure existing customers don't slip away unnoticed and new customers don't "jump ship" once on-board.

Navigating the Web

Social media and email campaigns offer an immediate and measurable line of communication to customers. In just a few mouse-clicks, a single Tweet, Facebook post, or email blast could reach thousands, if not millions, of customers. Best of all, you don't need an expensive marketing director to help you achieve success. By simply developing an engaging, exciting, unique online presence through social networking sites, blogs, email, and Web content, you can maintain quality, frequent contact with your customers.

Social Media

Posting content to social media websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, is totally free. Facebook, for instance, allows you to post unlimited updates and "tag" content, such as photos and videos. Post a humorous digital image or provide useful updates on a new driving law, and you could see an immediate increase in traffic—along with a few extra thousand electronic thumbs-ups to boot!

All That Glitters Glows

Social media and email campaigns offer an easy (and inexpensive) way to let customers know about money-saving coupons, glossy specials, driving-related games, and exciting online competitions. But don't simply focus on providing incentives and rousing brand awareness. Find new and exciting ways to drive customer support and strengthen communication. Here are a few tips for doing so:

• Develop a pattern of consistency. Produce engaging, high quality content every time and your customers will be more likely to "opt-in" to future mailings, respond to calls for action (e.g., "Enroll in a refresher course today!"), and share the great experiences they've had with your traffic school.
• Your content should be fun, friendly, and filled with the useful information customers need to know about traffic safety.
• In cyberspace, a "friend" is only as cool as his or her last tweet, status update, or email blast—so keep consistent and be creative!
• Strengthen your relationship with your customers one update at a time. As important state driving laws change, send out helpful updates and follow-up materials, or post Web links to useful save-driving news. Drivers can stay informed and kept up-to-date on pertinent state driving laws, and you can remain the trusted, dependable "friend" that you are!
• Uphold the laws of merchant etiquette. Don't overload your customers with too much information. Simply being aware of, and controlling, the breadth of material you regularly send to customers could minimize the number of complaints you receive later on. Whatever information you do provide, though, should be accurate, concise, and up-to-date.

The ABCs of the Right Name

What's in a name? Having the right name can immediately boost your exposure—and your bottom line. Your school's name is the natural thing to lead with when introducing yourself to new prospects and in maintaining presence of mind with existing students. It provides immediately information to customers and potential customers about whether you provide the services they require and whether they're likely to have a positive experience.

First, pick a name that conveys something about your school. If you want students to enjoy taking a traffic safety course from you, think about incorporating words such as "fun," "great," "easy," or "pleasant," etc., into your name. Or, if you're playing up the bargain aspect of your school, you might use terms like "cheap," "economical," or "low-price," etc.

Further, not also state regulatory agencies include schools' URLs in their listings of approved providers. In those cases (e.g., California) you omight consider including "www" and/or "com" and/or the term "Online" in your school name, in order to help prospective students to understand that you have an Internet-based program. There's no need to completely abandon your existing name; you could simply modify the name to include one of the above-mentioned extensions. For instance, "Example Traffic School" might become "www Example Traffic School Online com."

(Remember that official name changes may require regulatory filings. California affiliates who need help with this paperwork should contact Chris, via email or by calling 800 . 487 . 1699.)

A Simplified Guide to SEO

It doesn't have to be this complicated!

We've published to this blog many useful posts about Web marketing, including information about social media and search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns. This is because—particularly as more and more students attend online traffic safety education courses—Internet marketing is a primary means of driving business to your school. If you've already incorporated some of those tips into your marketing efforts, good for you and keep up the great work; we hope you've seen a bump in your business!

But if you haven't yet taken steps to boost your Web traffic, why haven't you? It's probably because some of the concepts can be hard to understand, or because you think the changes will be too difficult to implement on your site.

That's why we wanted to share this simplified guide to SEO. In addition to an easy-to-understand, step-by-step infographic, the article also contains links to a few other helpful pieces to get you started on the road to an optimized website.

So, what are you waiting for? Just a few simple tweaks could start sending more traffic—and more traffic safety students—your way!