Digital marketing has become a prominent part of all and any business, whether it’s into fashion or food. With the increasing popularity of social media and online platforms, it is high time small business owners start investing and implementing in right digital marketing strategies for future marketing and promotion of their brands. Right digital marketing strategies let you head the game and help you remain on top in the competitive market.
It’s easy to be baffled where to start, especially for small businesses with budget constraints. We’ve got your back! Today we’ll discuss the 9 best digital marketing tactics that are experts approved for maximum outcome.
1. Design a mobile friendly website
2. List Business on Google My Business Listings
3. Understand Your Target Audience
4. Excercise Local Marketing
5. Implement Content Marketing and SEO Strategy
6. Identify the Social Media Channel that Best Suits Your Business
7. Encourage customers to Share Online Feedback
8. Never Overlook Customer Service and Customer Experience
9. Invest Wisely
Digital Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses
Drafting a digital marketing strategy can be a little challenging, as digital marketing has various components of the virtual world. But remember, you don’t need to cover all of those; you only need a handful that would give you the best results.
1. Design a mobile-friendly website
There are no second thoughts that mobile marketing has become more pertinent than ever, the holy grail of digital marketing with more and more audiences browsing and shopping via smartphones. If you’re just starting your digital marketing journey, taking baby steps, take the first step to ensure your business website is mobile-friendly and optimized.
A mobile-friendly, up-to-date website with a clean design and smooth interface makes it easy for users to navigate the website across all devices. Free website builders like Squarespace and Wix make your jobs easy. These tools offer pre-designed tools and templates that are already mobile-friendly. So all you have to do is choose a template, add or change it as per your preference and test how it looks and functions on mobile.
2. List business on Google My Business listing
One of the easiest and free digital marketing tactics is to list your business on the “Google My Business” listing. If you aren’t familiar with the listing, just google search any business. You’ll see a window on the right-hand side with basic information about the company, including working hours, contact details, address, website link, and much more.
Image source: Search Engine Journal
This listing is known as Google My Business listing, a handy way to provide potential prospects and current clients with the necessary info about your business. All you have to do is create a listing for your business; once completed, you’ll have an everlasting digital marketing strategy at Google to work for your business. Always remember to update the listing with information about your business changes.
3. Understand your target audience
The key to successful marketing is to understand your target audience; what are their requirements, likes, dislikes? What engages them? And most importantly, who is your target audience and intrigues them?
At this point, you must have realized that your target audience for digital marketing is different than your local market audience.
For example, if you run a local heritage shop with organic, homemade products that deliver across the country, your digital marketing efforts would focus more on the audience that normally can’t come to your shop and purchase. In this scenario, you’ll focus on strategies that will help you reach the non-local target audience, connect with them and boost the purchase intent.
Target audiences differ depending on the business types. At the same time, it’s important to remember that different audience is active on different platforms. So make sure you do thorough research and implement what works best for your business criteria.
4. Exercise local marketing
Referring to our previous tactic, as businesses operate in local markets, leverage digital marketing to connect and compel the local audience. In addition to listing your business on Google My Business listing, you can also enlist your business listing on other local search directories.
Consider implementing other local marketing strategies, such as:
- Creating Google or social media ads and banners targeting your geographic area.
- Offering special discounts for walk-in clients.
- Participate in the local market events.
Even though these strategies are from outside the realm of digital marketing, you can easily connect them by including your business’s website and social media handles on any materials you distribute around your local community.
5. Implement content marketing and SEO strategy
Content marketing can be a game-changer of digital marketing when done right. It creates a huge impact on spreading awareness, building brand image, and attracting customers to drive more conversions. The easiest way to implement content marketing is to create blogs on products and services to educate the audience about them. And most educates the audience on why your product or service is better than the competitors.
Content that showcases your expertise and provides valuable information drives people to your website and also boosts your search ranking. Don’t forget to implement the SEO strategy to optimize your content using industry-relevant keywords. You can also connect with industry experts to assist you by sharing the content with their communities.
This is one of the most successful digital marketing strategies, which is also free. You don’t have to invest a lot to promote your content. If the content is good and SEO optimized, it will boost your website ranking. The bonus part is you can also share the content organically on social media to connect the broader audience.
6. Identify the social media channel that best suits your business
Like content marketing, social media marketing is another way to target a larger audience, like a sniper, a crucial one at that. Small business marketing statistics state that around 74% of buyers rely on social media reviews to help with their purchasing decisions.
However, social media marketing can be a little tricky, as the social media algorithms keep changing and require more effort. So, try low-cost marketing tactics instead; first and foremost, identify what social media channel works best for your business and then focus on it.
When you’re starting, make sure you focus on a single channel that fulfils your requirements and connects better with your target audience. For example, if you own a boutique, you’ll find Instagram as the social media channel that’ll benefit your digital marketing the most compared to Facebook and LinkedIn. Similarly, if you’re into SaaS, advertising, and marketing, LinkedIn works the best. Ensure to test different tactics to promote your social media.
Most small businesses often tend to make the silly mistake of blasting the follower with promotions, DMs. This actually backfires, turns them off, and makes them unfollow. However, If you add up a little spice of social media in your digital marketing and provide valuable content to your target audience, they are more likely to pay attention to the few promotions you blend.
7. Encourage customers to share online feedback
Another free digital marketing tactic is getting client feedback, encouraging your clients to provide feedback for your products and services. Client feedback and testimonials help boost brand image and build trust.
As positive feedback can help your business blossom, negative feedback can cause a lot of damage too. So, it’s crucial to monitor the reviews and quickly resolve the issue if there are negative feedbacks. The ideal rating to maintain is four and above. This tactic helps in two ways, firstly you get to interact with the current client base, and secondly, these feedbacks help compel potential clients.
8. Never overlook customer service and customer experience
Working in the digital world, it’s easy to miss the customer service practices; this makes customers feel disconnected. Adhere to interacting with customers, and this helps customers feel wanted. Addressing customer pain points, immediately resolving them with minimum SLA creates a hassle-free customer experience. This turns customers into brand advocates who promote your brand, building strong client relationships.
This is a critical part of digital marketing, and it can be a deciding factor in attracting new customers and, more importantly, retaining the existing customers. So, if you’re planning to offer excellent customer service, start with creating a contact page on your website where customers can find info on how to contact. Then, ensure you respond promptly to any queries and requests you receive from customers.
You can also invest in a chatbot, making it easier to interact with the customers and provide a resolution at the earliest. Moreover, once you’ve determined how you’re going to implement customer service, you can include this as a part of your value proposition. When you market your business on online platforms, you can provide information about your customer service, making your business easily accessible and alluring for potential customers.
9. Invest Wisely
As we’ve mentioned all along, it’s helpful to invest in free and low-cost digital marketing tactics when you’re a start-up or in the initial phase of your business. Even though digital marketing is necessary to draw the attention of your target audience, it can be challenging to dedicate a large amount to it.
Hence, creating a budget-friendly advertising and marketing strategy is a must! As you outline the budget, you must strategically focus on areas you want to invest the funds. For instance, digital advertising is a great way to reach the target audience but also can be expensive for small businesses. Be 200% sure where you want to spend your funds.
The key is to stick to basics, like designing a user-friendly businesses website, creating social media profile for your business, google listing, etc. Utilize as many free and low-cost digital marketing services. Once you’ve accomplished the primary tasks to build a digital presence for your business, if required, invest the funds in expanding and testing new strategies.
The Bottom Line
These digital marketing tactics will give you a kick start to promote your business online. All said and done, don’t forget not all strategies work for all businesses. Final tip: Don’t be afraid to think out of the box; test different strategies to find what works best for your business, scrap it if it doesn’t work.
We at ILLUMINATE DIGITRON
Illuminate Digitron is handy with the tools, tactics and resources to boost the growth of your business with the best digital marketing strategies in the industry. We not only promote your business with digital marketing but also build a strong brand reputation.
Visit us at Illuminate Digitron to get the best quote for your business.
1. Design a mobile friendly website
2. List Business on Google My Business Listings
3. Understand Your Target Audience
4. Excercise Local Marketing
5. Implement Content Marketing and SEO Strategy
6. Identify the Social Media Channel that Best Suits Your Business
7. Encourage customers to Share Online Feedback
8. Never Overlook Customer Service and Customer Experience
9. Invest Wisely
