The 5 Best Digital Marketing Strategies
For Small Business
Online marketing strategies are no different than traditional marketing strategies when it comes to goals and objectives. Both categories aim to increase brand awareness and help businesses find more customers online.
Online marketing or digital marketing as it is more popularly known consists of multiple channels that cover every aspect of online advertising from content creation to distribution and sales.
Digital marketing is an integral part of a successful business and many companies start out by creating eye-catching and engaging strategies. But digital marketing is so much more. From attracting new customers to increasing your sales, the right digital marketing strategy can take your business growth to new heights.
In this post, you will learn about the 5 most important online marketing strategies that small businesses can use to improve their online visibility.
Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Business
- Search Engine Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Engage with your online community
1. Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the first online marketing strategy you can use and it has two main components. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PSA (Paid Search Advertising).
In simple words, SEO can help you get more organic visits from search engines for free, while paid search ads can get you visits from search traffic, but you have to pay for them.
What is your goal with SEM? Your goal with SEM is clear: get more traffic from organic search or from search engines through carefully designed and targeted PPC campaigns.
How: To get more traffic from search engines, you need to make sure your website is search-optimized.
Things like your page titles, descriptions, web page speed, design and layout, inbound links, content freshness, ALT text for images and more are important.
Being at the top of search results doesn’t pay, but SEO itself demands some investment, especially in the effort.
If you’re small, the best thing to do is work with less scope and grow from there.
Your key approach is to be smart about keyword planning. SEO is about user intent, content creation, and link building – all around the words searched by your buyer persona.
When you make changes to your website to improve SEO, these changes will not be immediately considered by Google or other search engines.
You have to be patient and monitor your pages for improvements in their ranking through Google Analytics Reports.
2. Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is the next marketing strategy for your business. You have the best content curation in your hands, so now it’s time to spread the word, and the best way to do that is with a well-crafted social media marketing strategy.
What is your goal with social media marketing? Your social media campaigns should serve two purposes.
The first is to get as many targeted followers as possible so that your content and brand get as much attention as possible and the second is to get visits from social networks that will eventually turn into customers.
How: You need to establish a good presence on all major social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest) by sharing useful relevant content and engaging with people interested in your website, products or brand. I know it’s not an easy process to follow, and running campaigns on multiple networks at once is time-consuming, but that’s how online marketing works for small businesses these days, and you should too.
It’s always a good idea to have someone dedicated to this role in the organization – either an employee or an outsourced professional. Social networks demand constant communication and following trends.
But it is not that simple. Maybe you don’t have the team or the budget. What to do then?
Again, it’s time to be strategic. Investing in tools that automate and integrate social interactions can be a good solution.
Separating small intervals throughout the day to check profiles is also a great idea.
3. Content Marketing
This is a pretty ordinary marketing strategy, especially among small businesses. That’s why many business websites have a blog section for sharing helpful information with their customers; it’s part of their content marketing strategy.
Content marketing is at the heart of every digital marketing campaign. Once you have a good foundation (that’s search engine marketing) and a good delivery platform that can meet your user needs, the next step is to take all the necessary steps to create content!
Content will generate loyal audiences, comments, social media shares and most importantly sales.
What is your goal with content marketing? Simply put, it’s about creating high-quality content that your readers will want to read, and trying to convince readers to become customers or implement a call to action (subscribe to the newsletter, follow on social media, vote, take a survey, etc.).
How: Before creating content, whether it’s an article, video or image, try to think about how that particular piece of content will benefit your readers or customers.
Don’t create and publish content to keep a publishing schedule or to satisfy your desire to publish something.
“Create valuable, relevant and consistent content.”
In content marketing, the most important thing is to create valuable, relevant content that will be perceived by your audience, not just once but consistently. You can do this by determining the needs and problems of your target audience.
4. Email Marketing
Email is a very effective way to move prospects toward conversion.
Done right, it can be your ticket to loyal customers and repeat sales.
That’s because email marketing can be used for branding, engagement, acquisition, retention, direct sales, reactivation, traffic generation and referrals, making it an essential part of your beginner’s guide to digital marketing for small businesses.
So, what types of emails can you use in email marketing?
Here are three different types:
Transaction – sent through your automated system (order or return confirmations, password reminders, etc.)
Relational – Used to nurture leads (welcome mail, newsletters, blog articles, etc.)
Advertising – Used to generate sales (promotional content, offers, sales announcements, etc.)
To better understand this definition, let’s take a deeper look at how email marketing works:
Start by building your email list. In email marketing, the first thing to do is to collect the email addresses of your target audience. You can drive traffic to your website, blog articles or landing pages. That’s where you’ll create a ‘call-to-action’ asking visitors to subscribe to your email list.
People are often reluctant to give out their email address. If you help them, they will sign up for your email list. To convince them, offer a lead magnet like an eBook, a discount coupon, a step-by-step guide on an interesting topic, or anything they find helpful.
You can personalize your email marketing by sending targeted emails to customers who haven’t completed a purchase or informing them about a new product similar to what they’ve purchased in the past.
5. Engage with your online community
For small businesses that rely on the surrounding community, localized marketing and engagement efforts should be at the heart of your strategy.
Your community (or virtual community) wants to support local businesses – whether it’s getting takeout or delivery from neighbourhood restaurants, shopping online or using services at local stores.
As a community-driven business, ensure your content strategy accounts for local intent and offers products or services targeted to your market.
Action Tips:
- Optimize your website with local search engine optimization (SEO) to ensure a geographically targeted web presence.
- Post social updates on your website and social media channels and focus on renewed efforts at quality customer service.
- Thank your customers and followers on your social media channels and share all the ways they continue to support your business.
- Shout out to any business you partner with.
Conclusion
Whether your business strategy is currently focused on short-term growth or long-term planning, digital marketing can be a much-needed boost to your business’s bottom line. The continued disruption of defaults and increased uncertainty can be worrisome, especially for small businesses. These digital marketing tips will help you adjust your business strategy in a thoughtful and innovative way and emphasize what your business has to offer.
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