But digital marketing is now essential if you want to grow your business. It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling products or services, selling to consumers or businesses or whether you sell locally, nationally or globally, digital marketing will put you in front of the right customers on the right channels.
If you don’t start building an online presence, you’re going to end up being left far behind your competitors.
Whether you have no idea where to start or you’ve made a start but don’t know what to do next, here are our top digital marketing tips for small businesses to help you implement and grow your strategy.
Top 8 digital marketing tips for your small business
1. Get to know your target customers
You’ve probably already got customers, so speak to them and your potential customers. Find out what they’re looking for in your products or services. What problems do they have? What questions are they asking? Where are they finding out information?
Taking the time to really understand your customers not only helps you to target potential customers with your marketing activities, it also helps you to build long-term relationships with them and really understand their needs.
You can also use the analytics tools on social media or Google Analytics to find out more about the people who are engaging with your brand.
Knowing exactly who you’re targeting, what they need, what they want to know and where they’re browsing will help you to market on the right channels and make sure your ads are resonating with your ideal audience.
Without this information, you’re going in blind, and you may find your digital marketing strategy is completely ineffective.
2. Take a look at what your competitors are doing
Compile a list of 5-10 of your closest competitors and have a look at what they’re doing online.
Have a look at their USPs and customer service too, and see if there’s anything you can do to differentiate yourself from them.
Having this information will help you to gain a better understanding of who your target customer is likely to be and the types of messages that resonate with them. Then you’ll be able to ensure your campaigns are targeted towards the right people and on the right channels.
3. Create a website and make sure you’ve got the basics right
Before you can build a presence online, you’re going to need a website, so that should be your first step.
Your website should act as your shop front and tell potential customers exactly who you are, what you do and all about your products and services. Allow them to buy online where possible too, or direct them to your physical store if you have one.
Ensure that your site loads quickly for the best results! The faster your site loads, the more likely it is that your visitors will stick around. A slow website can also affect the way your site ranks in the search engines too.
4. Make sure your site is optimised for local keywords
If you’re a local business targeting local customers, you’re going to need to include your location on your site as much as possible.
Do some keyword research and find out if people are searching for terms such as ‘[your product/service] + your location’. For example, ‘digital marketing agency in Sheffield’, ‘hairdresser in sheffield’ or ‘dog walker in sheffield’.
Make sure you include these keywords on your product and services pages, in the pages titles and descriptions so that Google can see where you’re located and ensure your site appears when local customers are searching for your business.
5. Set up a Google My Business and Bing Places profile
It’s free to set up both of these profiles and is a quick and easy way to improve the rankings for your business.
Make sure the information you provide is accurate and matches the contact details on your website. Make sure you have your business address, phone number, and store opening times on there so that potential customers know where to find you and can get in touch easily.
6. Start collecting reviews
Reviews can have a huge impact on consumer’s buying decisions. Having a Google My Business profile allows you to easily collect reviews from your customers and they can help with your rankings in the Google search results.
Research shows that 93% of shoppers say that reviews have an impact on whether or not they purchase a product. Start collecting reviews as quickly as you can through your Google account or through a platform such as Trustpilot. You can then display these on your website too.
7. Start a blog
Create a blog page on your website where you can share insightful and helpful information about what you do with your customers.
Think about the key pain points, questions and problems your customers have and create content that helps them to solve them. Try to avoid directly selling in your blog posts and just create content that can help your potential customers on their purchase journey.
Not only will this help your customers and keep the on your site for longer, it will also help to boost your SEO strategy too.
8. Create profiles on no more than two social media profiles
Social media marketing is another type of digital marketing. Creating profiles on the channels that your customers are most likely to be using.
Create a profile and update it with your branding and company information. We recommend starting with one or two channels as this will be more manageable.
Many consumers look to social media platforms to influence their purchase decisions so keep your profiles updated with information on your business, your products and services and anything about you that you can create social media posts about.
Building a community on social media will help you to get your brand out there, and build trust with customers and it’s somewhere you can advertise in the future if you have the budget.
In summary…
When you’re a small business owner, trying to get up and running with digital marketing can feel almost impossible. It doesn’t have to be.
Take small steps as outlined above, and this will have you on your way to a full digital marketing strategy. You might not be able to do everything yourself but making a start is great. Once you have these elements in place, you can then enlist the help of a third party such as a digital marketing agency to help you push it to the next level.
We offer two digital marketing packages. They’re based on results we’ve driven for small businesses like yours in the past. We’ve found a formula that works and we want as many small businesses to dip their toes into digital marketing as possible.
These packages will help you to get your strategy off the ground and start driving results for your business.
If you’d like a digital marketing package that works for you, take a look at our exclusive small business digital marketing packages.
