Digital marketing is an initiative that relies on online or digital mediums for connecting and proliferating a message to the target audience.
Since the world today is increasingly relying on digital mediums for content consumption and discovering new things, being online is imperative for any business, large or small.
A digital marketing approach is critical for today’s marketers, and small businesses, too, are slowly shifting gears towards digital. Even if they may have a niche and local audience, digital marketing is a great channel to maximize the brand’s reach and create awareness among the relevant audience.
However, despite the growing awareness about using social media and digital marketing, small businesses are often confused about what they should spend their energies on.
What is the best digital marketing strategy for my small business?
Examine your consumer’s internet habits to see where they spend their time. Your digital client base might not be the same as the one you’re used to. When determining which digital marketing methods to pursue, your money will be a major consideration.
When determining which digital marketing plan is best for your company, don’t be hesitant to try out a few various approaches. Examine the data to evaluate which approaches are most effective with your target audience, and make sure you’re getting a good return on your investment (ROI).
Some methods are tough to quantify but stick to your measurement method one recommendation is to compare the company’s income earned during various marketing campaigns to revenue created during other marketing campaigns.
In this blog, we will highlight 7 effective digital marketing strategies that small businesses should consider to elevate their overall brand marketing:
1. Focus on Content Marketing
The basis of all your marketing approaches will be the content you are creating, so it is important to start with this approach. Every business is trying to sell, but companies that make an impact on social media can inform and add value to the buyer.
Focus on creating content like infographics, explainers, and blogs to help your customer get relevant but informative inputs on your product and services.
You can later use a Call To Action (CTA) to help attract potential customers to your sales-focused pages, helping convert faster.
How small businesses do it
A blog should be at the center of the plan for small service and eCommerce businesses that can’t afford to invest in sheer volume.
There, you can post how-to instructions, tips, ebooks, and anything else that might be helpful in convincing a lead to buy a product you sell. Your product, for example, is Kodi.
You can create a full summary of all the versions so that the consumer understands what Kodi Build is and can make an informed decision.
It’s essential to keep a regular posting schedule, therefore aim for at least 2/3 of blog articles every week. To keep your persona interested, use social media to increase the reach of your work and blend fresh pieces with reposts.
However, the most important thing you should strive for is to be truthful and provide useful information.
2. Leverage the power of SEO
Digital marketing is getting extremely competitive, so search engine optimization (SEO) ensures that your content and brand get noticed.
The objective of SEO is to increase your ranking when your target audience is searching for a keyword that is relevant to your brand, and your page is seen in the initial results on the search engine.
To rank higher, focus on:
- Keyword research and volume
- Internal link building
- Optimizing content to provide high-quality and relevant information
- Getting noticed by reputed brands for backlinks
How small businesses can do it
Being at the top of the search results isn’t free, but SEO does require some commitment, particularly in terms of time.
If you’re a small business, the best thing you can do is start with a limited scope and expand from there.
Your main strategy will be to become more knowledgeable about keyword planning. User intent, content creation, and link building are all centered on the words that your buyer persona is most likely to look for.
You might start with less frequent and more precise keywords if you have a limited budget. If you sell phones, for example, putting your money on the word “phones” isn’t a good idea.
3. Use local search marketing
In addition to SEO, local search is especially crucial for small businesses focused on serving a particular geographic location.
Location-based marketing enables search results to be optimized depending on the user’s location, and this includes ensuring that your address, contact information, and business are easy to find online.
4. Hack social media marketing
Research indicates that 75 percent of B2-B buyers and 84 percent of C-suite executives say they use social media to make purchasing decisions. This overwhelming success of businesses on social media platforms makes it one of the must-have tools in your marketing arsenal.
The simplest trick is to create content that attracts and adds value to the customer, even with this platform, rather than being too pushy or sales-oriented.
Personalize using email marketing
And while you are focusing on more extensive marketing efforts, do not forget to leverage the power of personalization, which can be easily achieved via email.
Email marketing is still relevant and vital for small businesses, especially since Emails have a 50 to 100 times higher click-through rate when compared to Facebook and Twitter.
5. Use video marketing to the fullest
Video marketing came to the fore only in the past few years, but it has been around since 2010. While video marketing was hardly impacting in its initial days, it was growing each year.
This growth is mainly due to the increasing use of high-bandwidth internet and the compatibility of browsers and mobile devices to play videos optimally.
Today, video is a critical priority for marketers, especially since the rise of video marketing since the pandemic. As per statistics, video marketing is now an essential tool for marketers as:
- Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading it in the text (Insivia)
- By 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic — 15 times higher than it was in 2017 (Cisco)
- 72% of customers said they would instead learn about a product or service through video. 84% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video (Optinmonster). Additionally, 79% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy or download a piece of software by watching a video
- Video marketers get 66% more qualified leads per year (Optinmonster, 2019)
- Studies show that 54% of consumers want to see more video content from a brand or business they support (HubSpot, 2018)
With a rising number of videos being uploaded every minute, brands also need to remember that just using video marketing isn’t going to help.
It is also essential to make & edit videos to perfection to help the brand stand out. Using a video maker online, brands can easily create videos that will look spectacular.
6. Pay-per-click Marketing
Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing is when a company runs online advertising and only pays if the ad is clicked on. There are many various forms of online ads, such as those that appear at the top and sides of a search, promos that appear before movies, and ads that appear in mobile apps or when browsing the internet.
PPC marketing has several advantages, including the ability to tailor ads to a specific geographic place and the ability to only pay for results.
PPC marketing costs vary a lot depending on how much money a firm is ready to put into advertising. The majority of pricing is determined by keyword competition popular keywords with a lot of competition will cost more.
7. Do not forget Mobile Marketing
Finally, do not forget to optimize your website and digital marketing approaches for mobile.
According to research, 70 percent of US paid search impressions and clicks occurred on mobile devices. Most of your videos and online content are also more likely to be viewed on a smartphone, tab, or other devices, making it integral to optimize your approach for this platform.
Businesses can take advantage of mobile marketing approaches by being available to their customer on mobile platforms, allowing them to contact your business using text messaging, WhatsApp, and other chat options.
Having a direct chat option for the customer to connect with your brand allows you to provide timely updates and get information across quickly.
This is also essential as 70 percent of smartphone owners use their devices to conduct further research before buying in-store.
The bottom line
While your brand can consider numerous online marketing strategies, these basic marketing strategies can help you create a solid start. While each marketing approach like social media, website, SEO, video marketing, email marketing, and advertising has its unique place, remember that they are all interconnected.
For example, if your content marketing is not at par, and your website pages are stale for your target audience, no amount of SEO or SMM (Social Media Marketing) can help yield the desired results.
Only when all the marketing approaches are working in parallel can you create an exception digital marketing approach. Formulate your plan and combine more than one marketing area to maximize ROI on your digital marketing initiatives.
