Digital marketing is the marketing done through digital channels like social media, search engines, and mobile devices. Digital marketing is how people are finding businesses now, rather than through traditional means like print advertisements or word of mouth.
Small business owners should have some knowledge of digital marketing to promote their business. Luckily, it is not too complicated and there are plenty of free resources to help you learn!
Learning some of the basics can take your business from zero online visibility to getting some traffic to your website and sales. This article will go into detail about some basic things every small business should do to promote themselves with digital marketing.
Do not feel discouraged if you do not fully grasp everything the first time around. Digital marketing changes frequently and for the better for your business! Always look out for new tips and tricks to improve your presence on the web.
Having good quality images on your website is important. You want to make sure they are high quality and show your business in a positive light.
Not only do images look nicer, people read websites more easily when there are images added. This also helps with SEO since search engines like Google love high-quality images.
Having your customers feel like they know who you are and what you do is important for marketing. An image of you or your staff can be done easily with a phone or a free photo site like Picnik or Canva.
Having pictures of your products or of the work you do can also help with marketing as people see what you offer and it looks nice!
Making it easy for people to connect with you by showing who you are is important for spreading the word about your business.
Creating a social media profile is the first step to doing digital marketing for small business. Most people have at least one social media account, making it a widely accessible platform.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest are the most used social media sites. While it is possible to do digital marketing for small business on just one of these platforms, it is more effective to have an account on all of them.
Creating an account is free, making it easy for any business to start promoting on them. Creating an account requires only a name and email address, with no complicated forms to fill out. This makes it easy for businesses on a budget to get started!
By creating an account on the platforms your potential customers use most often, you will be able to connect with them and engage with their accounts.
Customer reviews are one of the biggest sources of information for potential customers. People look at reviews to see what other people thought about a product or service, and how they rated their experience.
Since customers use reviews to make decisions, it is important for small businesses to encourage customer reviews. This is not only important for online stores, but also in-store sales as well.
There are many ways to ask for a review, from email notifications to post-purchase emails and on-site pop-ups. Find what works best for your business and your customers and implement this into your marketing strategy!
For online stores, having an easy way to do reviews through social media accounts is a good way to increase participation. Having links on your website or sending an email with the link to the review site is an easy way to do this.
Another way to use digital marketing is to create discount codes for your business. People love saving money, and giving people free money is good publicity.
Creating promotional codes for your business is a way to do just that. You can create short-term codes for one time purchases or long-term subscriptions for recurring customers.
Short-term codes can be distributed through social media ads, emails, and on your storefront or website. Giving away a free item or service will entice new customers to purchase from you and spread the word about your business.
Long-term subscription codes can only be used a certain number of times, so the more people that use it, the more people that will continue using your service or buying from you. This again spreads the word about your business as people continue to purchase from you.
Both of these ways to use discount codes are great ways to do digital marketing for your small business.
Before you do anything else, you need to plan out your marketing strategy. What are you marketing? How are you marketing? To whom are you marketing?
These are the main questions you need to answer when creating a marketing plan. You will need to answer these questions for each type of marketing you do. For example, if you are creating a social media campaign, you will need to choose the social media platforms and then create the strategy to promote on them.
Nailing down your goals is the first step in creating a solid marketing plan. You should know what kind of results you want to see and set realistic goals based on that.
Keeping track of your efforts is also important so that you can see what is working and what isn’t. This will help you adjust your strategies moving forward.
Before you do any kind of marketing for your small business, you need to decide who you’re marketing to. Who is your target market?
What services or products do you sell? What kind of people buy from you? How old are they? Where do they live?
These are important questions to answer when doing digital marketing for a small business. You need to know who your audience is in order to reach them through digital means.
Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all have different audiences. Which ones your small business targets the most will determine which social media platforms you should use for marketing.
Using all of them is not a bad idea, though.
Before you do any digital marketing for your business, you need to determine what you want to achieve. Are you trying to get new customers?
Do you want to build your brand and reputation? Or perhaps you want to sell products or services through your marketing efforts?
All of these goals can be accomplished through the appropriate channels and resources. You just have to find the ones that best fit your business.
For example, if you are a small business that sells products, then advertising your products via online markets like Amazon may be most effective. If you are looking to gain new customers, then putting up an ad on Google Adwords may be the way to go. Both of these would cost money, but would prove effective in getting the intended audience.
Choosing the right tools for the job is an important part of doing digital marketing for small businesses. There are many free and paid for tools out there that help with the process.
Some of the most popular ones include: Google Suite, Social Media Apps (i.o. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook), Email Marketing (i.o. Mailchimp) and Analytics (i.o. Google Analytics).
Analytics is a very important tool to have access to as it shows you what is working and what isn’t. It can be used to see what pages people are visiting, how they found your website, how long they stay on your page, etc.
