Audience & Marketing Strategy Advice Needed

[paulpaul25]

Background Info

I'm currently offering a real medium high - top quality brand design service, including logo design, stationery, packaging, label, print design, focusing 100% on remote projects. I'm based in Europe but 90% of my clients are from the US.
During the last few months I've slowly built my social media presence and some social proof on IG and few designers communities out there. I've been asking my clients for reviews and recommendations on platforms like LinkedIn, basically I've been trying to enlarge my online presence as much as I can and build links between these platforms.

SEO

I've been doing my on-page seo and keyword research since I've launched my website. I spent quite some time developing the content based on the keyword research, I have a pretty good on-page SEO score but looks like I'm not getting any organic (search engine) traffic at all.

I was considering switching to wordpress and adding a blog section to my website, as I'm currently using another small hosting platform, specialized on simple portfolio-style websites. I don't know if that would help but I can't really identify the source of the organic reach problem.

Marketing Strategy & Defining Audiences - the main problem

My conversions dropped a little bit in the last month because of the virus situation and I've figured that it would be a great opportunity for me to learn and build a proper marketing strategy as I've started learning the basics of Google & Facebook ads since December-January.

I feel like I know a little bit of everything but not enough to start. I'm pretty confused on how to define my audience, as I can't track any specific criteria to do it, like the location, interests, age, position & so on, just because I have a really wide range of clients from various industries. The only thing they have in common is that they are all business owners, mostly startups & small businesses.

I'm not expecting anyone to hold my hand through the process but I'd love to hear what you guys think and what your suggestions are.

 

[ygg]

Yes, adding a blog section to your website can massively impact organic reach, as with every blog post, there are new words on your website competing with the rest of the Internet.

Good job on taking good action towards establishing yourself as a brand. Keep doing whatever has been working for you so far. I'd suggest you to look around for platfroms such as upwork and fiverr, and list your services everywhere possible. The simplest strategy for anyone in your shoes is to get as many eyeballs on your portfolio/listings as possible. And make it not suk. Many people are looking for services like yours everyday.

As for Google/FB ads are hard for beginner, and getting more competitive everyday. The answers of your questions can be reached through data analysis. However, this data costs you ads money, and it is quite expensive. I wouldn't recommend doing this, unless you are well budgeted /$4k+/ and prepared to learn new skills such as copywriting, persuasion, advertising, etc.

 

[paulpaul25]

Yes, adding a blog section to your website can massively impact organic reach, as with every blog post, there are new words on your website competing with the rest of the Internet.

Good job on taking good action towards establishing yourself as a brand. Keep doing whatever has been working for you so far. I'd suggest you to look around for platfroms such as upwork and fiverr, and list your services everywhere possible. The simplest strategy for anyone in your shoes is to get as many eyeballs on your portfolio/listings as possible. And make it not suk. Many people are looking for services like yours everyday.

As for Google/FB ads are hard for beginner, and getting more competitive everyday. The answers of your questions can be reached through data analysis. However, this data costs you ads money, and it is quite expensive. I wouldn't recommend doing this, unless you are well budgeted /$4k+/ and prepared to learn new skills such as copywriting, persuasion, advertising, etc.

Thanks for these, I really appreciate it!

I'll definitely start doing some more in-depth research and write down some proper articles to sustain everything & start the blog section.

I don't know if I'm right or wrong but I strongly believe that having a strongly branded store / website / presence is the key to compete with all the low quality services out there. I already have some aged accounts on the most popular freelancing platforms such as upwork, 99design, workingnotworking and I've been trying to link those as much as I could to my website so people can recognize me and my work.
Without being foolish, I would say I really like the quality of my portfolio and my work in general, and I got some positive feedback from other designers, clients and random people.

At this moment I'm not willing to spend that much on the data analysis or ads in general, as I'm pretty sure that these platforms are great at burning your $$$ if things are not set & organized properly.
One thing I've done back in the days was installing FB pixel to build some data for some fb ads, but rather than that retargeting / lookalike audience thing I'm not sure how can I use that data.

 

[Stas Va]

This is such an extensive topic. I don’t know where to start. The problem can be. That your niche actually can be pretty competitive.

1. Don't start any type of Targeting advertisement (Like Google Ads and Facebook Ads) before you learn how to work with Analytics. Installed Google Analytics on your website is not enough.
Goals/Conversions... Set your Goals to understand how you will determine how effective each ad IS.

2. Don't know how you offer services. It will be good to create a page for each service. It should look like an offer and to sell. Otherwise it will not sell. Landing Page and Analytics is maybe even harder and more important than knowledge about Facebook or Google Ads.

 

[paulpaul25]

This is such an extensive topic. I don’t know where to start. The problem can be. That your niche actually can be pretty competitive.

1. Don't start any type of Targeting advertisement (Like Google Ads and Facebook Ads) before you learn how to work with Analytics. Installed Google Analytics on your website is not enough.
Goals/Conversions... Set your Goals to understand how you will determine how effective each ad IS.

2. Don't know how you offer services. It will be good to create a page for each service. It should look like an offer and to sell. Otherwise it will not sell. Landing Page and Analytics is maybe even harder and more important than knowledge about Facebook or Google Ads.

I think the proper way to start would be to recreate and reorganize my whole website. At this point I only have a short description, portfolio section, about me, service list, client's feedback, and contact form. The service list is not customized in a proper way to track the visitor's behaviour, that's for sure.

Thanks a lot for these, I'll definitely start to learn about setting and reading the analytics as I've constantly missed that as I was focusing more on the other end.