Small Business Digital Marketing:
How to Create an Effective Campaign
In 2021, there were over 2 billion digital buyers purchasing products worldwide. These worldwide customers are the primary markets for both large and small companies.
One way a company (both large and small) can reach these markets is with a digital marketing strategy that promotes its products online. Are you a small business owner? If you are, you might be wondering what small business digital marketing can do for you.
Follow some of these digital marketing tips to reach new markets. Then you’ll take your sales to their next best level.
What Does Digital Marketing Mean?
Digital marketing means using digital platforms online to promote your services and products. Effective online channels in today’s markets include social media, email, and search engines.
You’ll see digital marketing promoting both commercial companies and non-profit organizations as well.
Digital marketing strategies can also target online devices (i.e., personal computers, mobile phones) to influence customers. Digital marketing can also use social media (i.e., Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook) to deliver messaging to potential buyers.
Digital marketing should showcase your company’s products and services. That’s why this strategy begins with your company’s website. More than 60 percent of small businesses have their own website that generates their digital marketing efforts.
Channels That Promote Digital Marketing
There are marketing channels that have the power to draw your target market in and eventually define your long-term strategy. These marketing channels include:
Voice and Visual Search
Consumers can use voice-activated search tools to help with online searching. Voice search is an easy way for a customer to send texts or get directions. There are currently 60 million adults in the US who own a voice-activated device.
Businesses enhance their websites to promote an optimal visual search. Visual search uses machine learning and AI to classify an object’s size, shape, and color the same way human brains do.
Live Streaming
Live streaming allows viewers to watch a video in real-time. A viewer only needs any internet-enabled device to catch these shows and other real-time messaging.
Live streams create a level of trust and an “in-moment” connection. These connections leave customers feeling like they are assured of your company’s next steps.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
User-Generated Content (UGC) includes images, videos, or text posted by a user from a different source of social media. UGC is gaining momentum because it’s inspiring and allows a business to learn about any causes that are important to their customers.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. SEO increases the quality and quantity of traffic that naturally finds your website without the help of paid ads.
SEO increases your website’s visibility and makes it easier for customers to find you when they are searching for something that you offer. The higher your visibility in search engine result pages (SERP), the more likely those viewers are going to see you and visit your website.
Build Your Small Business Digital Marketing Strategy Today!
It may seem like a mystery to unlock the secrets of how to do digital marketing. You can start with some of the building blocks outlined below to implement a digital marketing campaign. It’s time to drive more customers your way right now!
Build Customer Personas
Building a customer persona means classifying your ideal customers, based on their desires and goals. Marketing firms will analyze data such as customer demographics, buying histories, and likes/dislikes.
Collecting this data helps classify different customer behaviors and plan your future product campaigns to meet these needs further down the road.
Create Your Website’s Content
Content refers to all the pieces of information contained on your website that deliver your sales messaging.
Content can include videos, pictures, infographics, or blog posts that an audience uses to learn more about your products. Content helps your business in that it will help you entice, engage, and convert viewers into buyers.
Google will crawl your content sources, to get a picture of your company’s mission and goals. When Google finds your site the first time, they’ll keep coming back when more relevant queries come along.
Identify Your Preferred Online Advertising Platforms
Online advertising refers to the online channels you can use to deliver promotional messaging to your customers. Online advertising can include email marketing, social media advertising, and paid per click (PPC) marketing.
Here’s a closer look at each of these:
Email Marketing
Email marketing allows a company to send an email message or newsletter to a customer (or “subscriber”) who has given their permission to receive these communications from your company.
Email marketing can inform buyers, increase sales, and build a sense of community surrounding your brand.
Social Media Advertising
Companies can then leverage social traffic on social media sites to attract viewers to open their ads who are online primarily to socialize.
Social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter have ad platforms to allow companies to advertise their services on their social media sites. Snapchat and Instagram (IG) have a strong presence in online advertising as well.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
Pay per click (or PPC) marketing lets an advertiser pay a fee every time their company ad s clicked.
This method enables an advertiser to compete for ad placements within a search engine’s links. This helps that advertiser when a customer queries keywords related to their company’s product line.
Analyze the Outcomes
Consider your marketing outcome statistical reports so that you’ll know which campaigns are working and which ones aren’t meeting your expectations. These statistics can come to you in what’s called “dashboard metrics.”
Make a note of the number of likes, comments, or shares or if your images are shared on social media. For example, make a note of any comments or free likes on IG left by viewers.
What Are Your Next Steps?
If you’re a small company, you should learn all that you can about small business digital marketing.
Identify the social media partners you want to help launch your product lines. Outline the five or ten top questions you receive about your products and create a newsletter that answers them all.
Start following digital marketing trends and you’ll find more digital marketing advice from others in the field. Then sit back and watch your enterprise thrive well into the future.
