Diving into Digital

Digital marketing strategies to grow your small business

“You should start your own business,” they said. “How hard could it be?” they said.

Launching a small business is an incredible feat. It’s also a lot of work, especially to ensure your business is seen. That’s why digital marketing is a must for today’s small businesses. It offers more channels to promote your product or service, interact with your audience, and track your ROI to know what’s working. It also gives you new ways to get creative with your brand across different platforms, whether it’s email campaigns, social media, paid advertising, or digital content.

With so many possibilities, it can be overwhelming to know which is right for your business. The key is to find which platforms are most relevant to your audience and remember these 3 simple rules:

Attract the attention of your target audience
Keep them engaged with an authentic user experience
Create an experience that causes customers to spread the word about your brand

Keeping those in mind, let’s dive in and talk about some digital marketing must-haves for growing your small business…

A sound and simple strategy

Specifying the goals you’re trying to reach is the first step in achieving them. That’s where a thoughtful strategy comes into play. Corporate jargon aside, a strategy is simply thinking about why you’re doing something before you do it. What are your goals? Do you want to reach new customers or focus on growth from existing ones? Are you launching a new offering? What does success look like for your brand?

Crafting a solid strategy is what sets a successful digital marketing campaign apart from the competition. It requires knowing your audience, defining your brand, differentiating yourself from competitors, providing a memorable user experience, and measuring your efforts. Easy, right? The good news is that we live for this stuff and we’re here to help ensure your strategy has sass.

A website that tells a story

Your website is your brand’s home online. It’s a place to tell your story, invite customers in, and build an experience that provides value. This requires understanding the pain points of your audience and using your website to show how you can solve these challenges for them. Use helpful content to attract your audience and earn their attention. Ditch complicated designs or an overload of information to eliminate barriers as they try to learn about your business. And think about how you can create an authentic user experience at every touchpoint. Visitors will become leads and leads will transform into customers.

Tip: The most effective way to know if your user experience is working is to measure. Site analytics can tell you how much time visitors spend your site, where they click, the way they consume information, and ultimately if your site converts them into a customer.

Easy to find, hard to forget

You could have the most beautifully designed brand, but without SEO, it will go unseen. Sure, talking about Search Engine Optimization is less glamorous than other digital marketing tactics, but it will play a powerful role in the success of your brand. When your site is optimized with smart keywords related to your business, the industry, and your target audience, it will automatically improve the rank of your site in search results. SEO also opens up more opportunities to market your business. Like with PPC or Pay-Per-Click ads. Paid search ads employ a set of relevant keywords to place your brand at the top of search results and stand out from the competition. With 67% of clicks going to the first 5 results displayed in search engines, it’s hard to ignore the impact that PPC and SEO combined can have on your brand’s visibility.

Read more: Giving SEO a seat at the table

Social worth liking

Social media use is at an all-time high. And it’s not just because our parents joined Facebook. New social platforms—from Instagram to TikTok to Clubhouse—are changing the way we consume information, learn about new brands, discover products, and communicate with the world. It’s why social media is at the heart of any successful digital marketing campaign. Whether you’re just starting to build a social presence or grow your existing base, there are new tools and features designed to help you reach a larger audience and show off what you’re all about. These platforms also offer more opportunities to boost your exposure through paid advertising. With so many options at your disposal for social media advertising, the hardest part is sometimes knowing where to focus your energy. Wondering which platforms would be best to leverage your brand? Give us a call and we’ll roll up our sleeves to find the right strategy for you.

Put your brand on display

Display advertising can be an effective way to reach your target audience online, especially when they’re browsing other sites. Display ads are purchased through ad servers that use data from someone’s recent search history to determine when and who to broadcast your business. This type of advertising is widely used for a few reasons. It’s usually pretty affordable with different price tiers and it works behind the scenes to drive visitors to your site. Display ads also allow you to be creative with your ads and use a variety of content, from text to video, to audio.

Email that taps into emotion

It’s easy to get caught up in building your brand on social media. Just make sure you save room for email and content marketing. Email continues to be the holy grail of marketing communication and holds an average ROI of $44 for every dollar spent. That’s partly because email gives you the opportunity to guide your audience on their user journey. Develop and foster relationships with leads through nurture campaigns. Automate and personalize emails to specific customers. Use A/B testing to learn more about what type of content resonates with your audience. And a whole lot more.

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