Are you a small business? Are you not sure how to improve your website or social media? This post will cover what you need to know and use digital marketing to succeed with your small business.
Small businesses usually rely on the traditional forms of advertising such as outdoor advertising, word of mouth and prints ads. Now more and more companies are utilising digital marketing to boost their business online. There are considerable benefits to using digital marketing such as SEO, PPC and other areas of digital marketing.
Getting Started
Digital Marketing can seem very intimidating if you have never used it before. It can seem like you don’t have the skills, and a bit daunting.
Many small businesses may think they don’t have the money to compete online, and they probably believe that other businesses will spend more than them on ads and win, which is not what will happen. Digital marketing does not just involve paid ads but many other factors, too, such as SEO.
As a small business owner, you know that word of mouth is effective and can help drive traffic and leads, but you will struggle to grow your business if you shy away from digital marketing. More than likely, your audience is online and are waiting for you.
Research Your Competitors
You should start your digital marketing by carrying out some competitor research. This is a great place to start so you can see what they’re doing online and how they are performing. You should see who is ranking under the term you want to rank under and how are they doing it?
Get Your Website Up To Speed
Online customers demand a good user experience when they visit your website. They want a fast website, and if your website takes too long to load, they will go elsewhere. We are all guilty of doing this. We visit a website to find some info or view a product, and the website takes too long to load the home page, so we go to their competitors.
To see your loading speeds and how to improve them, use Google’s PageSpeed Insight tool.
Another way you can improve your loading times is by having smaller image file sizes. You should compress all your images before uploading them to your website, and many tools and websites can help with this. You should also correctly size each image.
Videos on the homepage can also drastically slow your website, so be wary of this if you want a video on your home page.
Set Up or Improve Google My Business Listing
Even if you are a small business, you have a Google My Business listing, even if you don’t have a website. If you don’t have a listing, then you can sign up here for one. This listing is essential for your business, and this will give people an impression of your business. A potential customer will look at customer reviews to see if they want to provide you with business or not.
You should optimise your listing. This means that you should have the following in your listing:
- Business Address
- Hours
- Phone Number
- Website
- Several good reviews
- Add high-quality photos
- Description of your business
- Choose a category
- Select applicable attributes
- Post to your Google business profile
- Ask and answer questions
- Add products or services
You will need not all of these for every business, but you should try to fill out as much as you can to boost your business in the rankings.
Create an Interesting Blog
Smaller businesses may be less likely to rank on the first page of Google. Abroad term related to their products/services.
For example, if you wanted to be page one under “Electricians Dublin”, it would be near impossible to reach page one when you are just setting up online.
It would take a lot of money to reach this position, and it wouldn’t be worth your while. Of course, if you could do this organically, then fantastic, you are on to a money maker.
Ranking for a broad term like this may not lead to more customers. Your blog plays an important role here. You should be producing content that your audience will find helpful and engaging, and it should make customers trust your business. You should also optimise your content for the search engines.
Consider Using Google Ads
You should consider investing money in an online advertising campaign, and it is a fantastic way to promote your website online. Google ads is a tool provided by Google where you can set up ad campaigns. It is a straightforward process, and once you do it, you get more comfortable after each time. The process involves:
- Ad Copy: This is the text that will be included in your ad.
- Keywords: These are the keywords you would like your ad to show up for.
- Daily Maximum Budget: This is the maximum you are willing to bid each day the campaign runs.
- Campaign Dates: You set the campaign start and end date.
Google Ads could be a great way to show up under specific keywords if you are not reaching there. You must factor in how much a lead will cost and how much will you make from that lead to see if using ads is profitable.
Create Professional Visuals
As we all know, content is essential to your digital strategy, and you must be creating high-quality content at all times.
Creating professional videos has some significant benefits. There are several reasons why this is such as:
- It helps businesses increase sales
- It convinces customers to buy a product or service
- It builds trust with the customer
- It helps the customer understand the product/service more
As you are a small business, you may not have the big budgets like others do, but there are lots of great local freelancers and students who would love to get the chance to shoot a video for a small business.
Local SEO
Local Seo is hugely important if you are mainly a local business. Maybe you are a plumber who works in Cobh. Then you want to improve your local SEO to Cobh and the surrounding areas. Google My Business which we mentioned earlier, plays a big part.
Another great tactic is to create pages targetting specific locations. If you are a plumber who only works in towns in East Cork, then make a particular page for each of those towns. You are more than likely going to rank high in location-specific searches.
Building links is also excellent for improving local SEO. You can build links from local news sites, bloggers, sponsorships and much more.
Email Marketing
Another excellent strategy for small businesses is to use email marketing, and it can help build better customer relationships and build a stronger brand.
A lot of small business owners assume that email marketing will not be effective for them. They are wrong!
To start using email marketing, you need to start building out a list. To do this, you will need to create a signup form. The form should be placed on your website and shared all over social media. Many businesses offer a 10% off code if users sign up to their mailing list as an incentive to join. Usually, users will sign up if they are interested in buying.
Once you have an email list, you need to decide what you will be sending them. Typically email marketing is used to send promotional emails or for loyalty programs.
You should use an email marketing service such as Mailchimp to create and design your email. Your email should have a clear CTA for the readers, and it could be to tell them that there’s a sale on or a new product. Make sure to place it on the top of the email as hierarchy lets users know what is most important.
Once you have sent your email and some time has passed, you should analyse your performance and see what you can change or improve for the following email. It gives a unique insight into your audience.
Social Media Presence
If you are a small business, then you should be utilising social media. It is a free way to gain more potential customers, and it also helps build your brand and give people a better impression of who you are and what you do.
You should focus on a primary social media channel. Facebook or Instagram are great for local businesses looking to gain more customers, such as a cafe, whereas Linkedin is great for B2B services.
Chatbots
Another engaging but straightforward feature that is growing is the use of chatbots. They are placed on your website’s home page, and they can help your audience with any problems they have or help them with a product or service.