Digital marketing expert speaks to local business leaders

MOSES LAKE — Local dignitaries, business people and economic development leaders from Grant and Adams counties gathered Tuesday to learn more about digital marketing and online strategies for connecting with customers.

The event was part of the Grant County Economic Development Council (EDC)’s Building Prosperity 2016 luncheon series at Big Bend Community College. It was headlined by Hagadone Digital marketing expert Doug Schust, who spoke on various topics relating to improving digital presence for local businesses.

Schust’s presentation focused on several of the 12 principles outlined in a book he co-wrote called “Digital Minds: 12 Things Every Business Needs to Know About Digital Marketing.” About 250,000 copies of the book have been sold worldwide, he said.

Now with Hagadone Digital, Schust said he was previously the president of a company called WSI (We Simplify the Internet), which he tabbed as being the world’s largest digital marketing agency.

“Those of you who haven’t experienced a lot of different things in the digital world, you’re going to,” he said. “The digital world is changing rapidly.”

Schust’s address Tuesday covered everything from dominating local search engine optimization, to social media marketing, to website analytics, to organic search rankings, and much more.

The devil can most certainly be in the details and the approach to digital marketing, Schust said. There are a vast variety of different approaches to building an online presence, both organically and through paid marketing techniques, but each has to serve the right purpose.

“What do you do to build a successful digital strategy? You look at traffic, and then you look at the word ‘engagement,’” Schust said. “You can spend as much money as you want getting as many people to a site or to wherever you want to go, but if you don’t have a way to engage them, you are just throwing your money out the window.”

Capitalizing on analytical information can help guide digital strategies to make sure they are effective, Schust said. The information available in analytics can be very important for business growth.

“The better you can understand analytics — and it’s not about understanding everything, it’s about understanding what’s important — but these types of things really improve your campaigns,” he said.

Another subject of emphasis Tuesday afternoon focused on what makes a website rank highly on Google or other search engines – in other words, what can help a business’ website show up near the top of the page for a given search?

The algorithms that calculate search results change frequently, Schust said, so no solution is necessarily sure-fire, but there are consistently important factors. One of those factors is the quality and quantity of a website’s content. Another is the business’ social media activity.

“If you are a directory and you’re competing against Yelp or Yellow Pages, you have to have an awful lot of content to compete extremely well,” Schust said. “But if you are a day-to-day business … you can rank pretty high fairly quick with just some good, solid content. And that doesn’t have to be 100 pages, it’s 10, 15, 20 pages of content – good, well-written content.”

The bottom line was that the strategies and tools are available to help local businesses grow their online presence, both organically and through paid means. Schust said if there was one idea to take away from his Tuesday address, it was this: time and location equals device.

He explained that the time of day and a customer’s location can fairly accurately predict what device the customer is using. For example, early in the morning, most people use their smartphones. In the afternoon at work, they are likely using a laptop or desktop computer, and in the evening, many use tablets or smartphones.

This idea, Schust explained, can help businesses make sure the dollars they spend on digital advertising are working for them and not going to waste.

“Don’t spend it where they’re not hanging out,” he said. "Don’t waste your time, don’t waste your money. Narrow it down as fast as you can and you will be way more successful.”