Marketing can be a minefield, leaving you unsure where to turn and what to do first. But with a lower barrier to entry, digital marketing can be the way to go if you're just venturing into the world of marketing.
So Let's take a look at the top tips for digital marketing for small businesses.
Research competitors and differentiate yourself
You might think this isn't all that important, after all, your clients will research and go for whoever fits their needs the best.
But if you haven't researched your competitors, then how do you know that your business will be the best solution for your clients? Your competitors may be able to fit their needs exactly whereas you just fall short.
But what's this got to do with marketing? It's simple, if you have selling points that are different from your competitors, advertise them. If you do free consultations, shout it from the rooftops, if you're fully qualified in what you do, let people know.
If you're struggling to find things that make you different, invent something, are you faster than your competitors? Do you have a better relationship with your clients than they do? Do you use a different pricing model?
Get your website up to speed
Website users are becoming demanding when it comes to what they expect of load times.
If your site takes up to 10 seconds to load, then it's 123% more probable that a visitor will just leave rather than waiting around. This is compared to 32% probability when the site takes up to 3 seconds.
From these results, you can see that it's important to get your site speed up to scratch.
Improve your Google My Business listing
Google My Business gives you a level of control when it comes to how people perceive you online. Some of the common mistakes you can avoid in this area are:
- Having duplicate listings
- Setting up a new listing after you change address
- Adding promotional messages to your business name
Have an interesting blog
Most businesses are in a competitive industry so you need to have content that's going to stand out from your competitors. If you have content that they don't have, it's likely that people searching for the terms you are using will find you compared to your competition.
Tips for blogging:
- Put your audience first, you need to make it engaging and understandable
- Make sure it's optimised for search engines - it's pointless making the content if search engines can't understand it
- Use the correct tone of voice - you know your clients and how they'll expect you to write, do you need to be formal or friendly?
- Show your readers that they can trust you
Improve your search engine optimisation (SEO)
SEO is important if you want your website to be found on search engines. And we have previously created a post that explains some tips you can use to improve where you appear on the page: Simple SEO Tips To Help Boost Your Site. Some of the takeaways from it include:
- Having a title tag and meta description
- Compressing your images
- Naming your images
- Adding rich data to your search results
- Fixing your 404s
Develop your email marketing
Email marketing is a good way to reach out to people who are interested enough in your services to provide you with an email address that you can market to them with.
Deliver interesting content directly to their inbox and you'll stay in their minds when they need you. Just remember, don't email too often otherwise you could be seen as spam.
Focus on your social media
A question that small businesses often ask is "Which platform should I focus on?" this has a deceptively simple answer, focus on the platform with the most relevancy to your business and where your customers are most active.
If your customers are other businesses, then LinkedIn and Twitter are the natural choices for you.
If you're focusing more on consumers then Facebook and Instagram could be better choices for you.
If you feel as though you don't have time to focus on multiple channels then just find the one where most of your customers are and focus on that one.
Summing up
If you're not sure where to start with digital marketing then these tips can be a good place for you to start.
But if you're still not sure what you should be doing or how you should be doing it, then reach out and we'll be happy to give you a helping hand.
