Chicago Digital Marketing

What is Website Marketing for Chicago, IL Small Businesses?

Simply put, digital marketing throughout Chicago is advertising your products through online channels like websites, search engines, social media, email, or mobile apps.

Digital marketing means SEO or PPC advertising to most Chicago organization owners. While both of those services are used in internet advertising, neither fully explain the depth of a modern online advertising program for Chicago-based businesses.

Today's website advertising services often include dozens of digital marketing tactics, all working in tandem to help you increase visibility and conversions throughout Chicago, Illinois or nationwide.

The best Chicago internet advertising plans will include plans like:

• Drive traffic to your digital assets (websites, apps, sales funnels, etc) by using SEO, social media marketing, affiliate marketing, or paid advertising.
• Increase revenue for your Chicago small business through landing page creation, sales funnel development, and conversion rate optimization.
• Analyze how visitors navigate your digital assets to figure out improvement areas, retargeting opportunities, and conversion rates.
• Build trust in Chicago by using content marketing, video production, backlink authority building, reviews, and social proof.
• Create and nurture relationships with email, SMS, and social media.

If you live in Chicago, you probably love the Chicago Bears football team. Go Chicago Bears! In addition to marketing Chicago-area websites, our website marketing company also offers Aurora, Decatur, Elgin, Joliet, Naperville, Peoria, Rockford, and Springfield small businesses and large corporations a professional digital marketing service.

Our Digital Advertising Services for Chicago Organizations

We're a team of internet advertising experts, just 194.1 miles away, who know and understand the latest online advertising trends for Chicago businesses. We've helped boost traffic and drive conversions across more than 100 business industries in Chicago, and the rest of the country, so let's work together.

1.) PPC Management

The act of creating and optimizing Chicago PPC advertising services is known as paid ads management. However, that is an incredibly simple explanation, so let's dig a little deeper.

A paid advertising firm for Chicago often begins by getting to know your company and its business model before providing expert PPC management. This information helps determine the next steps, since the way you'd approach paid ads for a local Chicago small business is much different from how you'd handle it for an ecommerce brand.

Service providers in Chicago, for example, are often only searching for quality leads. To accomplish this, paid ads can generate traffic to a landing page or sales funnel that is optimized. Start with Google Local Service Ads or Facebook Lead Forms if those digital assets don't yet exist or need to be substantially improved.

In contrast, ecommerce brands are most likely to be interested in online sales. Pay-per-click advertising can be used to build traffic to an optimized product or category page. You might even want to include Google Shopping Campaigns in some cases. We've even utilized sales funnels to help sell products, subscriptions, and services.

The next step in Chicago PPC ads management is understanding the metrics that will be used to optimize and scale. To maximize the value of paid advertising, most Chicago firms implement email collection strategies through squeeze pages or lead magnets. To better understand ad attribution and reporting, it makes sense to integrate with Wicked Reports, Triple Whale, or Northbeam. For that to make sense though, your ad spend should be over $1,000/month.

To be successful with PPC advertising, your Chicago organization should utilize multiple advertising strategies and marketing tools. Pay-per-click campaigns in Chicago should include tactics like:

• Promote your digital assets (websites, sales funnels, etc.) via search engines, social channels, and third parties.
• Make your Chicago business more profitable by acquiring qualified leads or selling online.
• Utilize third-party attribution software to better understand ad attribution.
• Provide social proof with case studies, white papers, video testimonials, etc.
• Engage users in story creation, email collection, and user generated content.
• Test ad creatives across various ad placements and between different media formats.

2.) Social Media Marketing

Social media ads are paid advertisements placed on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn that are used in Chicago online marketing. With these social channels, you can target your target audience based on their interests, behaviors, and demographics. However, the downside can be the added cost of setting up the campaigns, creating landing pages, building out sales funnels, and performing conversion rate optimization to ensure the PPC advertising function as a proper lead gen or sales generation tool for your Chicago company.

Utilizing data from social media platforms, advertisers can deliver targeted content to audiences based on their demographics, interests, and behaviors. Even though social ads is a huge opportunity for most established Chicago small businesses, it can be costly for those businesses that aren't ready for it.

Our social media advertising agency helps small businesses and large corporations make the most of social ads by building them out with sales funnels and lead generation tools. In our Chicago online advertising services, we recommend putting in place plans for conversion optimization and retargeting, both of which will help improve the return on investment you see in your campaigns. Don't forget about the freshness of your ad creatives. If you're running a social media marketing service, you'll need to watch out for ad decay and ad fatigue to make sure that your campaign doesn't lose performance.

3.) Search Ads

The use of Chicago search engine ads in internet marketing involves paid ads being run on search engines like Google and Bing. You'll find that Google ad campaigns and Bing ads are quick and simple ways to get your Chicago small business in front of an engaged audience. One downside is the cost of setting up an effective and scalable campaign, which often involves creating conversion-optimized landing pages or sales funnels.

We help businesses of all sizes build out the necessary landing pages and funnels to drive leads and drive revenue, which makes PPC advertising a cost-effective Chicago internet marketing strategy. You can get a better return on investment by creating a plan for retargeting and conversion rate optimization for any search engine marketing campaign in Chicago.

4.) Lead Generation

Lead generation is the most important part of an inbound marketing strategy for local organizations in Chicago. Not everything can be sold online. Many products and services need a phone call or in-person meeting to close the deal. Lead generation strategies are crucial for these kinds of Chicago small businesses looking to get sales from their site.

There are many types of lead generation strategies to consider, all of which have been tried and implemented by our online marketing team at some point in the past. The most common lead gen plans include the creation of helpful content, retargeting past website visitors, nurturing past contacts with email marketing, engaging visitors with live chat, developing free tools for visitors to use, creating referral programs and affiliate programs, creating video content that can be shared online, setting up free webinars for visitors to attend, and offering helpful downloadable content in a lead magnet.

Our team can develop and implement one or more lead generation tactics in your digital assets to test what works best for your Chicago organization.

5.) Conversion Rate Optimization

There is almost no reason to neglect conversion optimization within Chicago internet marketing solutions. This is an essential component of any kind of online marketing in Chicago since it directly impacts whether the marketing campaign provides value for the small business or big company paying for the service.

Increasing conversion rates will make a big difference in your revenue. It's important to understand what CRO is, how it works, and how to evaluate it. It's an iterative, time-consuming process. What makes it most difficult is the CRO plans that work for one Chicago business might not work for a different Chicago business, even when both are in the same industry.

The most common CRO tactics include reducing form fields on contact forms, testing different call-to-action phrases, creating attractive headlines, implementing a sense of urgency, fixing mobile website problems, improving site speed, adding exit-intent popups, defining value for the visitor, and adding trust and social proof signals.

True conversion rate optimization for Chicago websites can become much more complex. To really dive into CRO, we must fully understand your business offer, your competitors, the strengths and weaknesses of your value proposition, how visitors are currently interacting with your digital assets, your online reputation in Chicago, and many other factors.

6.) Revenue Funnel Development

A sales funnel, or purchase funnel, is the visual representation of your customer's journey with your Chicago company. The illustration of a sales funnel, which is often referred to as a marketing funnel or revenue funnel, looks just like a physical funnel you'd use to pour a liquid into a container. The top of the funnel is always larger because it illustrates the large number of potential customers that might interact with your Chicago small business. The funnel narrows at the bottom to represent the various exit points within the sales process. Naturally, the bottom of the funnel is the smallest part because it represents the number of people who converted through the generation of a lead or the sale of a product.

The use of a conversion funnel for your Chicago small business is more difficult than the explanation of its concepts. For example, some of the most successful sales funnels produce millions of dollars of value each day for their Illinois organizations. To develop a sales funnel that produces value for your Chicago business, you must put thought into the goal of the sales funnel and the type of sales funnel you want to implement.

There are numerous types of sales funnels, including self-liquidating funnels, automated webinar funnels, lead magnet funnels, premium customer funnels, free plus shipping funnels, affiliate sales funnels, and dozens of others to consider. When you work with one of our website marketing specialists, you will have an experienced internet marketer to bounce ideas off to help you determine the best type of revenue funnel for your business. Alternatively, if you don't have an interest in being involved in the process, we can research more about your business and industry to determine the best funnels to explore and test within your Chicago digital advertising service.

7.) Email Marketing

You can use email marketing campaigns within a digital strategy to build brand awareness, grow website traffic, drive sales and revenue, bring awareness to your social media profiles, engage past customers, and gain valuable information about your target audience.

We help our Chicago digital advertising clients use Mail Chimp, Campaign Monitor, and Constant Contact for their email marketing campaigns. These are robust email marketing tools to create subscriber lists, segment your audience, and even develop email marketing drip campaigns.

The most important part of email marketing is developing a plan to improve your subscribers. We help Chicago email marketing clients build and nurture their email marketing lists by implementing email collection opportunities within affiliate programs, lead magnets, exit-intent popups, checkout processes, lead magnets, exit-intent popups, and numerous other methods.

8.) Content Marketing

Most Chicago organizations use content marketing as a means of attracting, engaging, and retaining a high-interest audience by creating and sharing relevant blog articles, instructional videos, case studies, white papers, and other digital media. This internet advertising approach for Chicago websites helps establish your company as an industry thought leader, while also helping you dominate organic search results and the attention span of your target audience.

When your target customers in and around Chicago begin to identify your brand as the source of valuable advice or guidance you will find it is easier to guide them through your sales funnel. We help Chicago online marketing customers put together the right content marketing plan for their specific industry and goals.

It is important to identify your target audience before starting a content marketing plan. This will help you understand the best media format for the content, whether that be informative blog posts, detailed case studies, informal whitepapers, best-in-class listicles, or drip email campaigns. It will also help you determine the best delivery method, which can be from social media, search results, or some other medium.

We often help implement content marketing strategies that involve blog content, custom graphics, infographics, podcasts, videos, email campaigns, whitepapers, case studies, surveys, webinars, checklists, listicles, and lead magnets. We particularly like using the case study method because it is a powerful tool for showing expertise as a leading Chicago website advertising firm. These are all effective ways to market content if you implement them correctly within your Chicago business.

9.) Online Reputation Management (ORM)

Your online reputation in Chicago and beyond is an important trust factor search engines use to determine rank positions, and your target audience uses it to make purchasing decisions. This is true for all types of purchases and decision-making, ranging from the selection of a nearby service provider in Chicago, the purchase of a product on an ecommerce store, and even the selection of a physician or attorney for a personal matter. People love reading about the positive experiences, and sometimes even more about negative experiences, that others had with your Chicago brand.

For local service companies in Chicago, we can help you develop a review generation program within your internet advertising to increase the rate at which past customers leave reviews for your small business. This often involves collecting reviews on Google My Business, UpCity, Yellow Pages, Angi, Yelp, and other online review collection websites.

If you run an ecommerce storefront, we can help with the collection of product reviews and company reviews. For an ecommerce business, it is important to collect reviews for both the quality of your products and the customer service experience of your Chicago storefront. Online shoppers in Chicago want to know the product they are purchasing is of sufficient quality or utility, but they also need to know you will be there to fulfill the order and answer questions after the sale.

For the reputation of professional service providers, such as Chicago doctors or Chicago attorneys, we can help establish protocols within your online advertising campaign for the collection of testimonials to ensure prospects always see a positive image of you. This includes review generation, reputation monitoring, online reputation repair, survey campaigns, and social growth for your Chicago website. In some cases, even SEO can be used to help curate the best possible first-page results for your online reputation in and around Chicago.

The risk of ignoring your online reputation is the loss of long-term business, which often isn't noticed until significant damage has been accumulated. Take control of your online reputation today to ensure you always put forth a better image than your nearby competition.

10.) Video Marketing

As a complete internet advertising company for Chicago, we have our own in-house video production and video marketing department. This has been extremely helpful for content marketing plans that required creative video assets. More importantly, we've used our video production department for the creation of video ads on YouTube and video marketing within Facebook Ads campaigns. There are many good applications for video production within your Chicago digital marketing strategy. You can use videos to demonstrate unique products, teach new concepts, and improve visitor duration. You can also implement videos within Chicago digital advertising services to bring life to paid campaigns.

Why You Should Invest in Internet Advertising for Your Chicago, IL Website

If you run a business in Chicago that sells products or services, you're going to need marketing to generate sales. You might be thinking about Chicago online advertising services over other, more traditional, marketing tactics. Let's go over some of the great reasons to implement digital marketing tactics within your Illinois business:

• Digital marketing is often more affordable than other forms of marketing because it can be started at a low amount and scaled as success is measured.
• With valuable reporting tools like Google Analytics, you can learn how many visitors interacted with your brand, how long they stayed on your website, and if they came back to your site in the days, weeks, or months following their first visit.
• There's no shortage of phones, tablets, and desktop computers in Chicago. Why not choose a marketing format and medium that is able to follow your target audience anywhere they travel in Chicago or throughout Illinois?
• With digital, you can update it a lot more easily than with print, billboards, television ads, or radio commercials.
• In Chicago, internet advertising is one of the best ways to engage users. You'll have to work hard to get people to like, comment, and share your non-digital ads in Chicago!

How to Develop Chicago, IL Online Marketing Services

To start your website marketing plan for your Chicago business, you need a plan with measurable goals. Your team needs to know what the business's ultimate goal is so you don't spend time on things that won't help.

1.) Identify your target audience

With a clear set of business goals in place, you can move on to identifying a target audience. It is important to understand who you are targeting in Chicago or beyond. Your Chicago digital marketing efforts will be more effective when you use platforms your target audience is on and messaging that makes sense with them.

2.) Assess the requirements of your target audience

Now that you know your business goals and your target customer, you can make an informed decision about their needs and search intent. This will help ensure you focus on the right keywords for your Chicago digital marketing and you align your content marketing plan with the needs of your audience.

3.) Launch slow progress marketing plans at an earlier stage

You should make search engine optimization your first priority if you're planning on using it eventually within your Chicago digital strategy. In online advertising, SEO moves the slowest. Search engines take weeks or months to recognize and index the tweaks you make to your website, your content, and your backlinks.

4.) Develop effective landing pages or funnels of high quality

You should consider paid ads for your Chicago business. You should consider creating a landing page or sales funnel instead of sending paid traffic to your product page, service page, or home page. Chicago paid advertising services with high bounce rates and low conversion rates typically send traffic to a page that's not optimized for converting cold traffic. The best Chicago lead generation strategies employ the use of splash pages and sales funnels to lead people to the desired marketing outcome.

5.) Create automated email sequences for retargeting

Now that plans are in place for bringing traffic to your Chicago website, you should consider how to best interact with those visitors after they leave your website. You can't expect everyone who visits your website, landing page, or sales funnel to convert. Consider options like email marketing, SMS alerts, or tracking pixels to retarget recent Chicago website visitors.

6.) Plan for continuous testing

When these Chicago digital marketing tactics are in place you are ready to enter the testing and optimization phase. Monitoring the success of your campaigns, searching for areas for improvement, and even splurging on new ideas you read about in case studies or white papers. In every aspect of your Chicago internet advertising plan, you should be optimizing conversion rates.

Why Choose WebCitz for Your Chicago, IL Website Marketing Solutions

Our goal is to be your Chicago organization digital marketing partner! When researching Chicago digital advertising firms, there are a lot of factors to consider. With more than 19 years of experience, you know you can trust the Chicago internet advertising tactics we suggest for your company. These are often the same Chicago website marketing tactics we use for our own lead generation and conversion rate optimization services. Our own digital marketing campaign likely landed you on our website from Chicago.

Our internet marketing agency should be your choice for your Chicago small business because you feel we are the right team. We are only a short drive of 2 hours and 59 mins away from you in Chicago, or mere seconds away from a phone or email!

• Our company has been around since 2004, so we have over 19 years of experience.
• We get most of our leads and new clients in Chicago from our own digital marketing plans.
• You probably found us in Chicago after searching for a service we offer.
• We don't outsource Chicago internet advertising plans because we have our own team.
• You'll probably get an answer within a few rings if you call during regular business hours.
• We're professionals in WordPress, WooCommerce, and Shopify for any Chicago digital marketing plans that need web development or website maintenance & support.
• We are actively engaged in ecommerce marketing services to help online retailers reduce ad expenses and increase return on ad spend in their online marketing.

When it comes time for your small business or large corporation to start the search for Chicago online advertising agencies, we hope you keep our digital advertisers in mind for the task. To start a discussion with the helpful staff at our digital marketing agency, just send us an email or give us a call.

800-796-8263 Email Us