If you are a small business and not using any digital marketing strategies right now, your business is already one step behind. However, it’s not yet too late to start your own.
Digital marketing helps businesses survive in the high competition in the market today. Despite this fact, a lot of them have doubts and questions about getting this type of service.
You need to fully understand what it is, how it works, and what is the right digital marketing strategy for you. Social Media Content is what small businesses mostly use to boost their sales. As an online business owner, you need to embrace the right strategy.
1.) Email Marketing
It is a type of marketing that a small business must be using whether they are online or offline. Basically, it is the process of creating a list of prospects and customers.
The list includes names and email addresses of people who are interested with your business or product and are more likely to buy from you. You know this for a fact because they are only included in the list because they opted to be in the list.
The list becomes more significant as the list of names increases. Until today, marketing professionals and experts consider this tactic as one of the most important marketing strategies for small business.
They can receive coupons to sign up or future updates on your products or services. You can use it to tell or share a story or sell your products.
Email Marketing is a cost-effective way to sell your product or announce some news about your business. It is a successful marketing service because a 2015 study has found that every $1 spent on email marketing, it provides an average of $38 return-on-investment (ROI).
Building your email list is the key to boost your ROI using this tactic. You need a clean list that consists of people who are interested to receive your message. There are tools that can help you achieve a clean email list like MailChimp.
2.) Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Everyone is talking about social media and using it. However, it can be tricky to include or integrate it into the business.
In 2015, records have shown that Facebook influenced 52 percent of consumers online and offline purchases. About 92 percent of businesses prioritized social media than blogs as their content marketing tactic.
Since the introduction of social media, these platforms have helped businesses in their marketing tactics online. It saved them a lot of money because social media channels are now used as a marketing tool to promote their business.
Business owners now use social media sites as publishing tools and not just for sharing content. LinkedIn is also a venue for businesses for publishing their content. Instagram and Snapchat are also leading social media sites that feature “swipe up” features in their stories.
Besides, your customers are already interacting with brands on social media. If you’re not reaching out to your audience using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest, you’re missing a huge chunk of business opportunities.
SMM allows you to post texts and images, infographics, videos, and other content that improve engagement. It can help you in meeting your marketing goals, such as building communication with your audience, boosting site traffic, building brand identity, and promoting brand awareness. You need to improve engagement with your audience on social media to increase the success of your marketing goals.
Follow these tips to increase the success of your SMM:
Social media Content Planning: Do keyword research and competitive research to come up with great content ideas relevant to your target audience.
Offer valuable content: Post regularly on social media platforms. Share valuable content to your customers and prospects.
Build a consistent brand image: Social media can be used to project the image you want for your business.
Track competitors: You need to monitor your competitor’s activities. They can provide valuable information for keyword research and insights on their social media marketing.
Share curated links: It provides you the chance to link to external businesses. When you find valuable content that can help your readers link to these sites. Doing it can promote trust and reliability. It’s also a great method to get backlinks.
Content promotion: It is the perfect venue to share your content like articles and blogs. It can help you build strong and loyal followers who are interested in your offer.
Social media crisis management: You need to plan how you are going to handle a crisis on social media.
Measure success with analytics: You wouldn’t know if your campaign is successful without tracking your data. Google Analytics can provide insights into your social media marketing strategies.
Choose the right platform for your SMM:
Facebook - You need to be active on Facebook if you want to use it for your campaign. Create a business fan page. Use cost-effective Facebook ad tactic because it creates a huge effect on your organic presence.
Pinterest - The platform is an image-based social media channel that you can use for selling. It can also drive sales and promote your products.
The platform allows businesses to develop their brand image through interesting pinboards. Keep in mind that it is most likely for the female audience.
LinkedIn -This platform is more for professional and expert individual and brands. It can be a good channel to associate with people and businesses with similar interests.
YouTube - It is the top platform for uploading and sharing video content. Videos can go viral quickly. Create informative and interesting “how-to” videos and unique video content to gain virality.
Twitter - Twitter is a great platform to share and update your audience across the internet. It’s a great way to earn followers and follow brands and influencers related to your brand.
Foursquare -This type of social media site is a great venue to promote your physical business on the internet. When you register, you can claim your location and enjoy perks such as special discounts and check-in rewards.
Reddit - Reddit, Digg, and Stumble Upon are great social media channels for sharing interesting and unique content. Reddit has amazing social media potential due to its 2 billion page views a month.
You need to submit only interesting content otherwise, it would only be flagged as spam. However, if your content is truly newsworthy and relevant, it can provide you with abundant marketing opportunities.
This kind of platform helps you increase your site traffic and widen your reach. It is also a platform to engage with your audience.
3.) Local Search Marketing
It is the process of optimizing your online listings in order for you to appear in relevant local searches. It pertains to promoting your business to boost your face-to-face contact with customers.
Single-location, small and medium businesses (SMBs), national brands, and chains can use this strategy. Local businesses that meet their customers and want to boost their visibility online can be done through local SEO or local search engine optimization (SEO).
When done correctly, people looking for products or services can find your business on local searches. However, marketing your business locally isn’t easy. Only experts can do it successfully.
Local SEO or local search is a more advanced approach to market a local business. It shows businesses in the local searches when a user types in and look for a business like yours.
To make it work, you need to feed search engines the right information so you’ll appear on the local searches. You need to send consistent details like name, address, phone number, and URL of your business to prominent directories. Search engines like Google are informed of your information like the nature of your business and location.
Consistency is the key. It tells Google that you are a trusted site or business. If your information appears inconsistent in these directories, Google will doubt your reputation.
Inconsistency can impact your local search ranking. When this happens, consumers will not find you when they search for similar products or services. Instead, they will find your local business competitors.
Begin searching for these websites: Google My Business, Bing Places for Business, Yahoo!, Facebook, and Yelp. Work on your business profile on these sites. If you are already listed, claim or verify your information.
Correct the necessary information. Update it in order to boost your local search ranking. Make sure that the information provided is similar across the platforms because it affects your reputation.
Clean up your directory information in order not to confuse Google and other search engines. If they get confused, your business ranking on local searches is greatly affected.
Choose the right categories for your business. Be as specific as possible. For instance, if you run a salon, state that it’s a “women salon.”
If not, your business will not appear in the search results. Use only a few categories.
4.) Content Marketing
Content marketing is all about storytelling. It is a marketing approach in creating valuable and relevant content to attract the audience who are more likely to perform an action.
It includes:
Webpages - Content that is shared online through sites is more likely to generate more views, reads, and engagement. Without doing this, it is impossible for businesses to achieve these benefits.
Podcasts - Podcasts are digital audio files that are available for downloads. Users can subscribe to receive the latest podcasts.
Today, businesses have used it as a powerful marketing instrument. It is a good alternative to video content since not all businesses can create videos. Podcasts are great tools to promote relevant message without the need to produce videos.
It is also a tool to boosts traffic. The technology helps businesses reach a wider audience who are really interested in your product or service. Your audience can quickly share it that widens more your reach.
As already mentioned, unlike videos, it is easy to create. You can produce podcasts using headphones and good quality microphones. You only need a stable connection to upload it on the internet.
When uploaded, it helps promote your business exposure. Make sure to share it on different distribution platforms.
When you create podcasts, it helps you enhance your relationships with the audience. It provides you a strong connection to your listeners. Listening to this kind of media is voluntary because they must be really interested to listen to it.
Good relationships with the listeners help build trust. It enhances communication that can help you to have better conversion rates.
Listening to podcasts is very engaging. Listeners connect automatically to the story the moment they listen to the story.
It is a great way to engage audiences in a different way. Since people are fed up with text information, podcasts are new methods to engage the audience. It provides the speaker with an opportunity to express the idea in a totally different level.
One study proved that it is a powerful way to drive purchasing decisions and sales. Out of the 300, 000 respondents, 63 percent were encouraged to buy after listening to a podcast.
5.) Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEM is a great method to improve your business in a competitive business world. This approach uses paid advertisements appearing on search engine result pages (SERPs).
One key advantage of using this method is offering advertisers a chance to place their ads in front of customers who are ready to make buying decisions. It is the only marketing tactic that can do it that’s why it is a very effective way to grow your business.
SEM refers to paid search marketing where companies pay search engines like Google to show the ads on search results. Some of the common terms associated with SEM include paid search ads, paid search advertising, pay-per-click, cost-per-click, and cost-per-thousand impressions.
Keywords are a crucial part of SEM because users enter keywords to find what they need. Google Adwords, Bing Ads, and Yahoo are the top paid search platform used by search marketers.
If you are a small business or startup, you need to think if these digital marketing tactics to grow your business. Plan and then combine it with your chosen marketing efforts.
You can use a platform that can render you these services. You can outsource search engine, social media, and local search marketing, depending on your goals and strategies.