Word of Mouth Marketing (also referred to in this blog as WOMM) is the act of a business trying to get consumers to actively talk about their brand, product or service that they offer. It also refers to the act of the consumer talking about the product and sharing their own experiences with the brand, good or bad. Word of Mouth is extremely important and arguably one of the most influential forms of marketing there is. A high percentage of marketing executives believe that it has proved to be the most effective form of marketing.

Every business, big or small, should utilize and learn from, word of mouth marketing. It is
important to note that the word of mouth experiences that are being shared about your business may impact your business. Because it may not always be something that you can ‘see’ take place, you should think of ways to spark good word of mouth marketing by ensuring the customer has a great experience with your company. Many consumers may choose to only talk about their experience with your company in a personal way and not take it to an online outlet such as leaving a review or sharing about it on their social media.

You can develop a Word of Mouth Marketing Strategy that will suit your specific needs
and help to achieve your goals. An example of how to start out a good WOMM strategy is to offer good customer service from the moment a consumer enters into contact with your business. Whether that is a physical storefront, an online store or website offering products or services, your social media accounts, etc. there are ways to make it a welcoming environment that will kickstart a good experience for the consumer. Customer reviews are also a great opportunity to utilize WOMM. The more positive reviews a product has, the more likely it will convince a new consumer to use the product. You can encourage and create good opportunities for customers to leave reviews. Think outside the box of ways to set your brand apart, this will spark organic word of mouth from your customers.

Where word of mouth was once only achieved in face to face interaction, it has now
expanded to the online world. With this, brings an increased chance of both positive and
negative word of mouth experiences about your brand. Writing reviews online and sharing about your experience on social media is as easy as clicking a button. This is why a business should be aware that every point of interaction with their customers is important. Though experiences with a company or product can be shared online or in person, know that Word of Mouth thrives on a level of trust. Hearing about an experience with a business or product from someone you know will be more effective than reading about a company online.

Developing a strategy that works towards Word of Mouth Marketing is important. Here is a good resource to learn more about WOMM and strategy examples that you can utilize for your business. Thank you for joining us on the Rancher Profiles blog today!

          ​Learning how to increase your website traffic is a great tool that will be very beneficial to your business. The main result we are looking for by trying to drive more traffic to your website is business growth. More traffic can mean an increase in your potential customers and help to generate quality leads. You’ll need to make sure that you are tracking your website traffic, because seeing where your traffic is coming from allows you to know what marketing techniques are working and provide insight on the audience that is visiting your site. 
 
What’s the current state of your website?

1. Before you get caught up in focusing your efforts on driving more traffic to your site, you need to make sure that what you’re driving the traffic to is worthy of your audience’s time. A site that is easy to navigate and pleasing to the eye will go a long way. Spending time to make sure your site contains quality updated information, is mobile friendly, easy to navigate, fast and responsive will definitely pay off in the long run. 

 
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

1. Learning even the basics of SEO is important. This plays a critical role in driving traffic to websites. What is the point of having a website if it is hard to find? Good use of SEO will help to increase your ranking in search engine results and boost organic traffic to your site. We will probably do a complete blog post about SEO in the future but there are many places you can find useful information on this topic. 

 
Be a Social Media Butterfly 

1. Social media is a fantastic way to increase brand awareness and direct your audience to a website, and it’s free! It is a space for you to promote your business but on a more personal level. This is a place where you can get involved in the community by connecting with your audience, participating in discussions, answering questions and more. Promote your blogs, upcoming events, sales and other quality information regarding your business. Simply posting your content and signing off may not be enough though so make sure to spend time being active and interacting with other accounts.

 
Email Campaigns

1. Though a bit more traditional in sense, email marketing is definitely still a useful tool that can produce results with your audience. Plan your email blasts out carefully though because too much information too often could cause your audience to unsubscribe from future emails. Make sure that the information you are sending out is relevant, useful and insightful. Making announcements, sharing upcoming events, new product offerings or providing other useful information are all great examples of reasons for email campaigns. Side note: A catchy subject line is key!

 
Take Advantage of Google Business 

1. Google My Business is a great way to establish your business and drive traffic to your website. It is a free tool that will provide useful insights regarding traffic if used correctly. Having a completed Google profile will increase your chances of people coming across your website and Google listing. Paying attention to your Google listing insights is a great way to keep track of your growth. Data includes how many views your listing has had, how much activity, how many searches and even what words people are using in their searches. Once you find out what keywords people are searching for, you should implement those in your website pages and blogs as well. 

 
There are many more tools you can use to drive traffic to your website. Especially if you are not restricted to only looking at free methods. Online ads and paid Facebook advertising are very common ways of paid methods. We have countless resources at our fingertips to learn about all the techniques, paid and unpaid, to increase traffic and brand awareness. Take the time to research and test out what works for best for you

Today, Rancher Profiles, will share a few of the social media basics for you and your business. There are a lot of ways you can use social media but we will focus on just a few ways that will help you maximize the benefits for your business. So let’s get started! 
 
Is There a Perfect Time To Post and If So, What is it? 
       What is the best time to post? Well...you will find a lot of articles on the internet of studies that have been conducted to figure out what is the best time to post to receive the most engagement. And they all vary in answers! But when comparing multiple studies it seems to be the rule of thumb is that best engagement can be reached Tuesday through Friday during working hours. Somewhere between 9am to 4pm seems to be the best time to reach your audience. Engagement will most likely drop off after working hours and this is a likely result of people being busy picking up kids, making dinner, going to the gym etc. Take this with a grain of salt though because social media is constantly changing. In order to find the best posting time for you and your business, Rancher Profiles suggests that you conduct a test of your own. Try posting on different days and different times to see what works best for you! Target audience, time zone, industry of your business, etc are all factors that will play a part in finding the best time to post for you. But at least we can give you a starting point - Tuesday through Friday 9am-4pm. 
 
#AreHashtagsStillaThing?
       Yes! Hashtags are still a great tool to use to increase the probability of your post reaching a larger audience. You can include hashtags on your post or even as a comment on your post. The easiest way to include them is to compile a list of hashtags that are relevant to your content and keep it one place, such as the Notes app on your phone or computer. This way when you are ready to post, all you have to do is copy and paste! Don’t let the simplicity of this be a crutch though, it is always good to change up your hashtags or add a couple that are specific to your newest post. You can use trending hashtags as well!
 
You’ve Heard it Before and You’ll Hear it Again, Consistency is Key!
       Consistency is very important when it comes to social media. First, you need to develop your brand. A logo, brand colors, fonts, etc. are great for developing consistent content for your posts. Creating your own brand kit is a helpful tool that will make creating content easier in the long run. It will create a concise and balanced look for your pages. You can learn more about this and other tricks in our blog post: 4 Marketing Tips. Consistency in posting is also important. Posting often will increase your chances and opportunities for reaching your audience and social engagement. 
 
Schedule Your Content
       Whether your social media strategy is posting three times a week or every day, you can schedule out your posts to make this all a bit easier. Creating content ahead of time will allow you to look at the big picture of what your social media page will look like and help to make sure you are sending the right message to your audience. There are even tools you can use to schedule such as Later.com, Hootsuite.com, and Loomly.com, or you can even store it all in a Google Doc. When you schedule or create content ahead of time, you’ve already done the work of creating the content and writing your captions so all you have to do is post when the time comes. 
 
These are just a few tips that we find comes in handy when trying to conquer the world of social media. Trends and algorithms are constantly changing so staying up to date on the best way to reach your audience is important. Responding to messages and comments (within reason) is a great way to stay engaged with your audience. It shows authenticity, which is key when trying to keep customers engaged with the services or products that you offer. We hope you find this information useful when building your social media presence. Stay tuned for tips and tricks, coming soon to the Rancher Profiles blog! 

Rancher Profiles is happy to offer you a few simple tricks to keep up with the online marketing game. Things are constantly changing including how people are reached through online initiatives. We are excited to offer tips to help you maintain and grow your business and this post will be the first of many that highlight new ways to keep up with online marketing trends.  

1. Be Consistent       
          Be consistent with the information that you are putting out there. If you haven’t done so already take some time to think about your brand from a design perspective. Develop a color palette that will help keep your branding consistent. Have a few colors that match your logo and brand that you can pull from when you start to create graphics and other content. Having the colors of your social media, website and advertisements be consistent will allow your brand to become recognizable. Not to mention it will also make creating content a bit easier because you will have a limited amount of colors to choose from. Be consistent with your posting as well. The more content you put online the higher the chance someone will see.

2. Be Active On Social Media
          This goes along with being consistent but once you’ve created your social media profiles: Instagram, Facebook, Google Business, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. be engaged on those platforms! It isn’t enough to simply have an Instagram account. You need to be active in your posting and engagement with other accounts. Algorithms for social media platforms are constantly changing, so even if people follow you on an account they may not see your content. You need to spend time liking, commenting and interacting with other accounts. Take advantage of other opportunities to post by using the “Stories” and “Highlights” features on your Facebook and Instagram pages. This is also a good way to reuse content that you have already created. 

3. Email Campaigns
          The point of businesses using social media as a marketing tool is to guide traffic back to your business whether that’s a brick and mortar, online storefront, or your website where you offer services. Encourage your current clients and online platform followers to stay in touch by using email campaigns. Offer special discounts, highly sought after information and other special content to those who sign up for your email campaign. How often you should send out email campaigns is dependent on your business type but no matter how little you choose to send out emails, that one extra point of contact with customers is a step in the right direction. 

4. Word of Mouth - Reviews
          Word of Mouth is perhaps the most compelling form of marketing there is. You can see an ad on social media repeatedly for weeks and make no move purchase or learn more about the item. But if someone you know says something good about that item your perspective will instantly change. This is the power of words. One way that ‘word of mouth’ can travel online is through reviews. Guide your current and new customers/clients to write you reviews so people interested in your services can see other customers’ first hand experiences with your business. Reviews can easily be written on your Google Business Page or you can ‘feature’ customers’ reviews on your website and social media. 


While Rancher Profiles is geared toward ranchers and the cattle industry, we believe these tips apply to any business, big or small. If you ARE a rancher wanting to increase your online presence to gain more customers, this is for you. Use these digital marketing techniques to share your story. The point of digital marketing is not to HAVE social media, websites, etc. but to USE those platforms to bring the customers back to you. Rancher Profiles hopes that these tips were beneficial in learning how to increase your online presence. Stay tuned for more tips and stories coming your way!

​            Thank you for joining us here at Rancher Profiles and welcome to our new blog! We are excited to introduce this new addition to our website. This will be a resource that you can use to assist you in your digital marketing journey. We thought it was time to create a more personal space for us to be able to share information about digital marketing, tips and tricks that you can do to increase online traffic, share stories from our clients and more! If you have not done so already, follow us on our Instagram and Facebook pages to stay in touch. 
 
            With the rise in technology, it is becoming more and more important that your business has an online presence. This is important for any industry, even ranches! And that is what we are here for. Whether the thought of going online totally intimidates you or you just need a few extra tips to boost your online traffic, we can help.  Rancher Profiles is a tool that you can use to help build and promote your business. Our service offering will allow us to tailor a plan to fit your specific needs whether you are looking for long or short term assistance. We can give you the tools you need to get started or take care of everything on this end for you so you can focus on the business. While you may not need to be active on all digital platforms, we can work together to find out what avenues would benefit your business the most. We even offer packages if you wish to take advantage of more than one of our services. 

            The services that we provide can be grouped under three different categories, Design, Digital Marketing/Advertising and Event Coordination. A full list of our services can be found under the “Services'' tab on our website or you can check it out below:
 
DESIGN:                                                                                 

• Websites                                                                     
• Sale Catalogs
• Advertisements
• + Other Promotional Items

EVENT COORDINATION:

• Sale Management
• Event Planning
• Event Photography
• Event Videography

DIGITAL MARKETING/ADVERTISING:

• Advertising Placements
• Branding Consultation
• Social Media Management
• Digital Strategy Development
• Photography / Videography 

 
            Our most popular services are sale catalogs, social media management and website design. If you’re not sure where to start, contact us. We would love to hear from you! We have worked for the large, national organizations but now we want to work for you. The skills we have developed apply to any field, but the cattle industry is close to our heart. Rancher Profiles saw a need and an opportunity to help ranchers across the country expand and take that next step towards increasing their digital activity. Our goal is to be a resource for ranches and other small businesses to help bring their business to the next level. Through our design, digital marketing/advertising services and event coordination, we can help bring your dream to life.