Nowadays, businesses have more ways and places than earlier days to market themselves. But deciding on a marketing method, specifically when you are a small or even a mid-sized business with a small budget and restricted resources, can be hard. While social media marketing is free, it can be a time-consuming process, and the same is with blogging. But traditional print advertising and online marketing can be costly. Confused which option would be best for improving your social media or website? Here are a few online marketing tips for small businesses.
Digital Marketing Tips for Small Businesses
Trying to build a digital marketing strategy can be hard- after all, online marketing includes various facets of the online world. It is significant to remember, however, that your business does not need to cover all the areas of inline marketing. On the contrary, it is likely you will achieve success when you focus on online marketing strategies and see how they work for your business.
By keeping this mind, whether you own an established business, startup, or you are a digital marketing beginner, you can refer to these online marketing tips for small businesses.
- Research your competitors and find strategies to differentiate yourself from them
Competitor research plays a significant role as a local business, you will want to be able to provide extra value to the market. Google Search is one of the best places to start. Through Google Search, you can find out how your competitors are positioned within their ads. Once you know your competitor’s position, the next thing you must do is think about the ways using which you can differentiate yourself from all your competitors who provide the same product or service. If you do not find any differentiator, you must invest one.
- Create a blog using the right keywords
One of the best advertising strategies for small businesses is blogging. By offering your prospects and customers with informative content that you can advertise on your blog, promote socially and provide to other networks to supplement their strategy, you and tour team can establish yourselves as professionals in the desired field quickly. Also, it can impact your SEO. Blogging at least two times a week can increase the website’s ability to be found on the search engines. The more you do blogging, the more traffic your website will attain from Google, Bing, and Yahoo as you are adding fresh content to your website. If your blog has a call to action then, you might even generate more leads from your blog. Guest blogging is also one of the important marketing tools. By contributing to useful blogs, you can grow your reach and show off your ideas. In addition, you can link to your website through your author bio, making it simple for the people to visit your website.
- Leverage social media
If your small business is not using social media, then it is the right time to start. It has been found in several reports that social media can almost double the marketing leads of telemarketing, direct mail, or trade shows. As social media can be overwhelming, select one social media platform that your prospects or customers will find easy to engage with- be it LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter- and start building an online presence there. Once the account is set, next is to start connecting sharing your actual content, joining the discussion, and engaging with the community. Keep your social media efforts frequent and above everything, helpful and relevant to your audience.
- Use Instagram and Pinterest for posting
If you are selling a product or service which is in high demand, say, for example, you are in the food or bridal business, you must post images regularly on Instagram or Pinterest. Posting in both these platforms is free and has many followers. You can drive more traffic to your site through Pinterest, and no platform utilizes uses hashtags to increase the number of audiences like Instagram.
- Optimize your website for mobile
One of the significant online marketing tips for small businesses is invest in mobile marketing. With more and more customers browsing and buying products using tablets or smartphones, mobile marketing is growing. Though investing in a mobile-specific marketing can need a significant amount of investment, mainly if you are new to digital marketing, you can take the first step by making sure that your business’s site is well-optimized for the mobile too.
- Use email reminders and email marketing- Email marketing is a great option for engaging customers. It is better to integrate your email marketing campaigns with other advertising campaigns for maximum effect.
- Enhance Google My Business listing and customer reviews
Your online reputation as a small business owner could be one of the significant deciding factors when a potential customer is looking for your product or service. Fortunately, with Google My Business, you can have a control on managing how people understand your business. Few common mistakes you must avoid include:
- Duplicate listings
- Setting up pointless new listings after changing the address
- Misusing the business name, i.e. using unnecessary promotional messages
- Understand your target audience for online marketing
As you must be knowing that understanding your target customers plays an important role in online marketing. Try to find out who your target customers are. What are their likes, dislikes, and preferences? What are the things they search for? The same theory is applicable to online marketing. To have a successful online marketing strategy, you do not just need to understand your audiences, but you should also know when they come online.
Like for example, if you own a local brewery that ships and distributes around the country, your online marketing efforts might be focused on the target audience whom you usually do not reach with your location. In this case, you must understand who your non-local target audiences are and what online marketing strategies will help you to reach them and support them to communicate and purchase from your company.
Definitely, your customers might overlay, based on your individual business, but it is significant to keep in mind that different customers are active on different platforms at a different time- the audience whom you are trying to reach on Instagram might not be the same whom you are marketing through email- so you need to research and implement your strategies accordingly.
- Promote customers to leave online reviews
One of the best and completely free online marketing tips for small businesses is to encourage customers to leave reviews online. You must encourage your customers to leave their pinions online and moderate your company’s profile on review websites.
Just like claiming your business listing on Google or any other local site, you can claim your business on different review sites, like TrustPilot, Yelp, and many others. You can even use signage in your place and links on your site or in your mails to inspire customers to write their opinions about your business, products, or services.
Then, you must monitor your reviews and respond to any reviews fast, especially the ones that are negative. Ideally, you must maintain a rating of four stars or more. Finally, the benefits that you gain by following this method is dual. First, you will be able to build a rapport and interact with your current customers. Second, you can use the reviews of your customers to attract and influence other potential consumers to visit your website and buy from you.