No matter what small business you are in, whether you have a startup or small consulting firm or run a small cafe, or you have a bakery or a general store, you are always looking for a way to attract your customers in a pocket-friendly manner.
Online marketing is the best solution to this problem. The existence of digital marketing has completely changed how companies fight for the audience’s attention.
Investing in online marketing for small businesses is cost-effective and has many advantages. With the right tools, you can develop a low-cost strategy that requires only a small team to execute but yields a high return in terms of reach and awareness.
This article will discuss some digital marketing tips and proven techniques for marketing every small business online.
Table of Contents
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search engine marketing is one of the most effective ways to grow your small business in an increasingly competitive marketplace. SEM is the practice of commercializing a company with paid ads appearing in search engine results pages (or SERPs).
It gives small businesses to compete with larger companies with big brands by being visible in search engines.
People use search engines to find items both online and locally, so it’s vital for your business to rank high in search results for keywords related to what you’re selling. To get more visibility and traffic, you must make sure that your website is fully optimized for search engines and users.
Professional digital marketing agency offers such services and makes sure that your site is visible to those looking for the product you provide on the search engine. You must use digital marketing services for your small business.
Following are some types of search engine advertising:
- Search Ads,
- Display Ads,
- Pay-per-click (PPC),
- Retargeting/Remarketing Ads,
- Google Shopping Ads,
- Native Ads, more.
Content Marketing
Content is the king of every digital marketing campaign.
Content-marketing is the way to build and distribute valuable, relevant, and consistent content, attract and retain a clearly-defined audience, and drive customer attention.
Content marketing is what will create loyal visitors and customers, and it also focuses on long time results. This approach focuses on presenting information to potential customers about your product or service. Everyone is trying to sell something on the internet, but those who can educate are more likely to sell.
Content marketing is not that easy; there are few things you should keep in your mind:
- Create high-quality content
- The topic should be relevant to your website/business
- Must be optimized content for SEO
- Must be optimized content for the audience
- Consistent content creation & promotion
Nowadays, content is not limited to simple blog posts. It also includes videos, podcasts, images, online courses, webinars, and other mediums in which people consume information.
To get an excellent ROI from content marketing, you must ensure that you have sufficient time and capital for creating high-quality content that must provide value to your customers.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is one of the most effective online marketing strategies. Having a presence over social media can lead a company to present themselves, their ideology, product, services, etc., among millions of people present on social media. Social media is a suitable medium for brand building. And it also helps to increase sales and boost website traffic.
It is also true that it is challenging for small businesses to integrate social media with their companies. You have to think about the best social media platform that suits your business and which platform your audience is most active.
It would be best to establish a presence over all major social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., by regularly sharing relevant, unique, engaging, and valuable content. You should also be available to answer your audience.
You can also run ads on social media according to your needs and goals (like generating leads, increasing sales, brand awareness, etc.) and adjusting your target audience according to their demographic, interest, and behavior. Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Youtube ads, LinkedIn ads, etc., are examples of social media advertising.
For some businesses, it can be challenging to use social media advance features and make use of most of it. You can also hire a social media professional for the same. Some agencies also give free branding tips for small businesses through blogs and other mediums.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is the best and cost-effective tool for small businesses to establish a customer base and loyalty.
Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing, but it is still one of the most well-known and used communication channels on the planet. Email advertising is a powerful digital marketing technique that involves sending emails to prospects and customers. With the help of effective emails, prospects become customers, and one-time consumers become lifelong consumers.
This approach includes producing insightful and engaging content, as well as incorporating action- and time-based triggers. In email marketing, marketers build a list of customers and prospective customers. This list involves the names and emails of people who are interested in your product. Then marketers target them and try to sell products via sending effective emails.
The best part is to fully automate the email marketing process by applying some efficient tools like Mailchimp, Drip SendinBlue, GetResponse, etc. You don’t have to send the email manually to every person; with the help of tools, you can schedule your emails and send all of them together.
Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing is a method of promoting products or services and reaching your target audience via various mobile devices.
According to Google, mobile marketing has become very important for every business out there as people are more using their mobile phones to surf anything over the internet. Now people perform every step of the customer journey on their mobile browser.
Every small business should provide its user with the best experience when browsing their website using their mobile. In short, you should optimize your website for both desktop and mobile. Your website must be mobile responsive.
You can also check if your website is optimized for mobile or not through an online tool like Google’s mobile-friendly test tool.
Local SEO Strategy/Local Marketing
As we are talking about small businesses, it is evident that most companies must target a local audience.
Local SEO is a must for every business that has a physical store and address. No matter if you are a doctor, mechanic, retailer, plumber, tutor, etc., local SEO and local marketing can help you attract more customers in both the manner online or offline.
Local SEO/marketing includes website optimization for local search results and integrates a search engine’s maps function.
Every local business should aim to rank on top for searches related to your area with local search engine optimization.
Try to come on top when people search for long-tail keywords with the addition of a location in the search query (e.g., “veg restaurant in Delhi”). This can only happen through local SEO. Try to follow google SEO best practices to rank high and avoid any penalty from Google.
Google My Business (GMB)
Since we are talking about local SEO, we cannot leave Google My Business (GMB).
One of the best things you can do for your local small business is to rank on top of the Google My Business (GMB) listing. It is the most powerful tool if you are targeting local audiences.
For example, if someone searches for “Juice Parlour” and is residing in Varanasi, this what they see:
You can see THREE Google My Business listing before we even see the average organic results. By this result, we can say that if you can manage to rank your GMB listing in these top 3, you can pull in large numbers of customers without spending a single penny.
Google My Business combines all different Google platforms into one, and it includes Google+ profile, Google maps profile, Google reviews, access to data on Google Analytics and Google insights, and more. Google My business also displays your website, phone number, and opening hours on the search result.
GMB must be first on the priority list for every local business. And the best part is that ranking on GMB is not that hard. It simply requires optimizing your profile and then collects reviews and citations.
Conclusion
Small businesses can grow online if they follow these proven techniques. Start marketing your business today and take your business online. You probably have a long way to go in terms of establishing your online presence, but any steps you take would have a significant effect on your business.
The first thing you should consider when building your website is search engine optimization. Once you nailed it, then your next step would be to boost your reach through mobile.
After that, you might like to review your content strategy and make sure that your content is high quality, unique and relevant. Next, you must focus on social media marketing to put your product and content in front of the world.
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