Digital Marketing for Small Business: 8 Tips
According to fortunly.com, nearly 21.5% of small businesses are closed within their first year of operations. And out of the ones that survive, nearly half may be closed by the following five years. But why is this so?
There can be many reasons that businesses are shut down. Inefficiencies, disagreements between partners and a lack of adequate market exposure are the leading reasons for small and medium businesses being closed down in their first five years.
And although we can’t resolve disagreements or help remove inefficiencies for every business, we can help bring to light the information needed for businesses to gain the right amount of exposure in their respective markets.
But before we do that, we must understand why the right digital marketing strategy is vital to help businesses get through their first years with a stellar reputation.
Initially, marketing was a science reserved only for large corporations. But following the dot-com bubble in the 1990s, businesses were suddenly thrown into a world where the need to adapt to a global market became the critical factor in a company’s success.
Fast forward to today, and we find almost every business needs a digital marketing strategy that will help do three things,
- Boost a brand website’s rank on Google
- Help raise awareness in a specific area or target audience
- Communicate important information about your brand
There are several other benefits and applications of an effective digital marketing strategy. But these seem to be the most common among all our samples.
But a digital marketing strategy does more than just improve awareness. It also helps you keep track of important metrics that eventually affect your ROI or Return on Investment.
This is a critical application in digital marketing for small business because it increases how businesses use their budgets. Another great thing about digital marketing is that it isn’t just helpful in conveying information but also gathering information.
You can identify essential indicators of consumer behaviour by using technological methods such as browser cookies to remember the IP address from which a user logged onto a website.
But how should a small or medium-sized business plan its strategy, and what are the most current practices when it comes to Digital Marketing for small business?
Read on to find out!
Table of Contents
Tip #1: Find a General Direction
The first thing we recommend for any business, whether small, medium, or large, is to identify a general direction or vision for their digital marketing strategy.
This should include an accurate picture of what the company plans to raise awareness about and the kind of voice they want their brand to portray. Many small businesses want to come off as premium and affordable businesses that are the best option.
While large or medium businesses may focus on emphasising that they are a responsible entity that values the long term effects of their actions over the capital gain those actions may lead to.
Although your direction should depend on numerous factors like the age of your company and the kind of market you cater to, we can safely say that it is necessary to have a general direction so that every action taken by your digital marketing department is influential in making sure you portray the right image.
Tip #2: Understand the Market
Understanding the market can be broken down into two major components: Your target audience and your competitors. For every business, it is necessary to understand these two things as they concern the two key stakeholders that your market capitalisation will revolve around.
Target Market
A target market or target audience is a term used to define your ideal customer(s). This can vary depending on the kind of product you have. For example, sportswear will often be directed towards regularly active people or people trying to become more physically active.
Think about it, Nike’s branding revolves around the people who either watch or participate in sports. And that is perhaps the number one thing that gave Nike the direction it has today.
In the same way, by knowing your target market, your business can identify what it wants to stand for, which shall make all the difference a few years down the line.
Market Competition
Another critical aspect of finding the right direction is to look at the market and watch what your competitors are saying to your target audience.
You can use this piece of information in two ways. The first is a simple copy-cat method where your brand claims to have the same effects and utility as a competitor, essentially making both brands equal.
However, the second approach is to analyse the voice of your competitors and give your brand a direction that is one step ahead of the game. By doing so, any business can take advantage of open space and seize more market share.
Tip #3: Define your UX or User Experience
Since this entire article involves digital marketing for small business, we simply have to speak about the implications of having a good User Experience on digital channels such as websites and social media.
Making your brand available online is simply the first step. The second step is to design all the material posted on the internet related to your brand to remain aligned with your brand’s general direction.
Another reason to emphasise the importance of UX Design is that a great design makes a user or prospective customer more likely to approve of a brand or buy their product.
Think about all the websites you’ve ever visited, and each time a website wasn’t working correctly or had visibility issues. That feeling is exactly what you must try and avoid when designing a user experience for your brand’s website or digital channels.
Tip #4: Use SEO Aggressively
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is defined as the scientific or calculated method used to improve your website ranking on Google Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
This includes several different aspects that create a compound effect to establish the legitimacy of your business.
The main advantage of SEO is that whenever a prospect searches for terms relevant to your business, your website or web page will be the first option they see being recommended by Google.com.
- Coombe, Will (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 247 Pages - 09/11/2017 (Publication Date) - Independently published (Publisher)
Content
An SEO strategy is incomplete without many things, the first of which is impeccable content.
This includes any copywriting for your ads or branding campaigns, website content that conveys valuable information about your business, or any text content displayed on other social media platforms.
By using good content to paint a picture with words, businesses can effectively sway the opinions of potential customers and increase their brand awareness.
Backlinks
Another essential component of your SEO strategy in Digital Marketing for small business is backlinks.
Backlinks are external or internal links that lead a customer or user from one web page to another, provided they click through the link.
By linking your web page to web pages on other relevant websites, you can significantly increase the likelihood of getting your website on the first SERP.
This is because Google also factors the amount of relevant information you provide to a prospect when calculating your rank on their SERPs.
Tip #5: Use Social Media
We’ve mentioned social media multiple times in this post. But why? What makes social media the most potent tool for promoting your brand and gaining exposure? The sheer volume of people that go online every day.
Facebook has nearly 1.9 billion people using its services, excluding the daily 500 million active users on Instagram.
That’s a total of 2.5 billion people that can be affected with the right marketing campaign every day. This is the power of social media in a nutshell, and it is why many companies have overhauled their digital marketing and social media departments in the last five years.
By remaining active on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, & Instagram, a business can quickly convey its message and roll out creative ad campaigns on any level they wish.
This is because each of these platforms allows businesses to target audiences according to locations and their budget while ensuring that businesses only pay for a “click-through” rather than paying for the chance to post ad campaigns.
This helps ensure that even the smallest budget is used in the most optimised way.
This simple revenue model has made Facebook a global giant and is also why most small and medium businesses use Facebook & Instagram marketing to promote a product in their vicinities.
Tip #6: Introduce Video Content
Text content has begun falling behind in market penetration during the digital age. On the other hand, Video content in animated and live forms has been steadily gaining traction, as can be concluded by studying the growth of platforms like YouTube and Tik Tok.
Not only is Video content easier to mould in whatever creative way you like, but it is also very effective in promoting your brand in a fraction of the time when compared to written content.
This helps businesses make creative content that is more likely to grab the audience’s attention and convince them to purchase or take action.
- Mowat, Jon (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 288 Pages - 08/31/2021 (Publication Date) - Kogan Page (Publisher)
In this day and age, digital marketing for small business is turning to animated video content that is more affordable to produce and easier to edit post-production.
Many businesses have managed to re-use concepts from previous videos in their latest content. This accomplishes two things.
First, it helps maintain the voice and image of your brand with consistency throughout your promotions. And second, it limits the amount of time spent creating video content for your brand.
Tip #7: The Power of Influencers
Currently, the influencer marketing space has an estimated value of around $16.4 Billion and is projected to reach nearly $41.9 Billion by 2027. This just shows the amount of potential that businesses see in Influencer Marketing.
But what is an Influencer? And what is Influencer Marketing?
Simply put, influencer marketing is the use of famous public figures to promote new or existing products. This is comparable to the practice of paying celebrities to wear and promote your products when making public appearances.
But the question arises: How can a small business afford to pay the hefty fees associated with hiring a celebrity?
The answer lies in your Instagram feed.
If you’ve ever seen a person on social media asking you to use their promo code, then we’re glad to tell you that you have been reached by influencer marketing. This is a great way to promote your brand this year because it is entirely scalable.
This means that whatever size your business is, there is a high probability of an influencer out there that is both active in your target audience and affordable enough for your budget.
Tip #8: PPC Marketing
Following the events of 2020/21, businesses began to understand an essential aspect of digital marketing for small business known as PPC or Pay-Per-Click Marketing.
This nifty little marketing method is a great way to get bang for your buck when promoting a product/service.
PPC marketing relies on a model where you only pay for every click your brand’s online platforms receive. Using this method, a business can effectively maximise the number of people they reach per dollar.
Conclusion
Currently, the global value of Digital Marketing has risen to almost $350 Billion and is expected to reach a valuation of 4786.2 Billion by 2026.
Author Bio: Nathan Enoch Burridge has been a part of the Digital Marketing Industry as a writer for years. His passion is to help people in every aspect of online marketing flows through his in-depth expertise with the industry and current employer, Website Turbix. Nathan Burridge is also an author for several niches, including tech blogs. He likes spending time with his family, studying cultures, volunteering, and working for positive change.
Last update on 2024-06-28 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
