Do you own a small business? Are you looking for ways to boost sales? How do you do that?
If you are a small business owner, then you know that marketing is one of the most important things that you need to focus on.
The internet has dramatically changed the way most things are done so having an online presence is essential for the survival of small businesses today.
With the right digital marketing strategies and tools in place, small businesses can attract more customers, increase sales and amplify brand recognition.
Not sure how to start digital marketing for small businesses? Here are the seven easy steps that you can do to start digital marketing for your business.
1. Build a Professional Website
Without a website, you’re invisible. It’s as simple as that.
In today’s day and age, a business is nothing without a website and a visible online presence. The first step to doing any digital marketing is to build a professional website.
An attractive and well-designed website is the face of your business and therefore it is necessary that it is built well and looks attractive.
It’s one of the first things potential customers will see and it will make an impression. If it’s not polished and professional, it could make a bad impression.
A professional website is your 24×7 salesperson.
The website should be easily navigated, should give enough information about your business, and should be aesthetically appealing. This will help the visitor to get all the information about your products and services easily.
It’s easier to build a website with the right tools than to try and build one yourself. You can simply build your website with WordPress website builder.
2. Understand who your customers and target audience are
One of the most crucial aspects of digital marketing for small businesses is figuring out who your target audience is.
If you can’t figure out who your target audience is and what they want, you’re never going to be able to engage them.
And if you’re not engaging them, you’re never going to convert them. And if you’re not converting them, you’re never going to make any money.
In order to understand how to market to your ideal customers (and what to market), you need to know who they are and what they want. There are a lot of ways to figure this out, but it all starts with asking yourself questions.
- Who are your customers?
- How old are they?
- What do they like?
- What do they dislike?
- What kind of things are they interested in?
Once you can answer those questions, you can start to tailor your marketing to fit their tastes. The more information you can gather about your customers and prospects, the more you can tailor your marketing to speak directly to them.
I hope you understand the importance of understanding your customer and target audience.
3. Use Google My Business Listing
Google My Business is a Google product that allows you to manage your business information online. It’s a new way for customers to find your business online and for you to connect with those customers.
Let’s imagine you are traveling to a new city and you want to eat pizza or burger or anything that you might love to eat. So, what’s the first thing you will do?
You might be searching on Google for Domino’s pizza near me or McDonald’s or something like that.
And suddenly you found it on Google, then you see restaurants photos, customer reviews, directions, and so on. Hurray! Finally, you found it.
Then it makes you curious to know more about the restaurant, so you keep looking for information such as the location of the restaurant, opening hours, menu, etc.
And guess what it is? Whatever information you are looking for there is Google My Business Listing.
Let’s imagine you have a restaurant business and you want to increase the number of customers coming to your restaurant.
But you do not have your business listed on Google My Business. So whenever people search for restaurants near your area, they even don’t know that your restaurant exists.
Hence, it’s very important to spread your business online because most people are looking for services and products online.
So you need to get your business online and create your business listing on Google My Business.
Google My Business allows you to:
- Manage your business information on Google Maps, Search, and Google+.
- Edit your business information, add photos, add a website URL, view business insights, and respond to reviews.
- Helps you to increase visibility of your business online
- Helps to build trust with your potential customers
- Drives customers to your physical location.
- Showcases your business to the right people.
- Build a strong reputation by responding to customer reviews.
And ultimately it also helps you attract more customers with enhanced Google search results. I forgot to include this in the list. LOL😁
4. Use Social Media to engage your audience
While the Internet is a great marketing tool that allows small businesses to compete with larger businesses, it should be treated like a bull in a china shop.
As the saying goes, “the pen is mightier than the sword”, and with social media, your small business can have a mighty pen.
Social media is a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes, from the biggest corporations to the smallest mom-and-pop shops. The question is: Are you using it to its full potential?
A recent survey found that small businesses are actually underutilizing social media for their businesses. Only about a third of small businesses are actively using social media for business development.
One survey states that 97% of people access social at least once a month, which means social media is the major source for product information.
If you’re not using social media to grow your business, you’re missing out on a ton of opportunities to connect with your audience.
Social media lets you communicate directly with your customers, which means you have a much better opportunity to understand your customers and grow your business.
Social media is a great way to reach out to your target audience, but it is imperative that you understand what social media is and how it works.
Once you understand the tools of the trade, you will be able to use them for your own marketing purposes. Not all social media is created equally.
And if you are looking for some of the more popular social media sites, you may want to consider Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest.
5. Use email marketing to build a relationship with your audience
Email marketing may be overlooked by some small businesses, but it is a great tool for building relationships with your customers.
With the advent of social media, email marketing has become less popular, but it is still one of the best ways to get your message out to a large number of people.
According to Statista, the number of email users is forecasted to grow to 4.6 billion in 2025, which is more than half of the population in the world.
The best email marketing campaigns are those that offer something of value to the consumer. Give them a reason to open your emails and read your messages by adding a special deal or something exclusive to them. And then to follow up in a few days or weeks and ask them to purchase a product or service.
For a small business, email marketing also allows you to build a relationship with your customers.
Having a personalized email address for your business gives you the ability to deliver information directly to your customers and to keep them in the loop. You can make use of email marketing to provide updates, send invitations, or share an event that you are hosting.
Here are some additional tips to help you get started with email marketing.
- Use email marketing to sell your product or service
- Offer a free trial of your product or service
- Send out a survey to gather customer opinions
- Send out a newsletter or share a blog post
- Send out an invitation to an event that you are hosting
- Offer exclusive discounts to your customers
- Have subscribers enter a raffle or lottery to win a prize
- Use email marketing as a customer service tool
- Offer a free consultation for your customer
- Run a contest to give away a prize.
6. Create professional and engaging content for your audience
As a marketer, you know that content is the king. Content is the king because you can’t go anywhere without it. The reason why you are reading this article right now is that there is a need for content.
It’s no secret that content is essential for growth in the world of digital marketing. Whether you are a new company or a well-established business, it is important to know that you need content in order to thrive in today’s digital marketing world.
These days, it’s impossible to just have a website and expect people to find you. You need to create content that people want to find. And that content needs to be engaging and (dare I say) entertaining.
It is not just the content you create, but also the content you curate.
The best way to reach people is to give them something they want. Whether that’s useful tips and tricks, news, or listicles, you need to make sure your content is doing its job.
7. Optimize your Local SEO
Local SEO is a very important part of digital marketing for small businesses. If you have any physical business location and you are doing online marketing for your business, then local SEO is for you.
There are a lot of great ways to market your local business online. If you already have a website up and running, optimizing your site for local search is the best place to start.
Let me explain to you by example how local SEO can help your business.
Let’s say you have a garage where you provide vehicle washing services, repairing services, maintenance services, etc. in a particular area. Suppose anyone is looking for a car washing service in that particular area, so he/she might be searching on google like “car washing service near me or car washing service in X area or something like that.”
And you’ve listed your business online with proper information, with proper keywords, business address, etc.
So, whenever he/she searched on Google, your business came up on the first page of Google for that particular area with all the information such as phone number, location, and hours of operation, then the person who is looking for that service will visit your website and there are high chances that visitor will convert into a customer. That’s how local SEO works.
Basically, local SEO is optimizing a website to gain visibility for a particular area in local search results. Hence, the most important benefit of local SEO is a higher website ranking in search engines. The higher the ranking, the easier it is for people to find your business website.
Google has recently announced that local search is going to be a strong ranking factor for local businesses, so it is important for every business to have a presence in local search.
Now businesses can create a Google+ Local page and claim their local business listing on Google. They can add their logo, business address, phone number, and hours of operation.
There are also a variety of review sites that businesses can create their business listing on, such as Yelp and Facebook. Businesses should also make sure they have a mobile-optimized version of their website because local search is going to be strongly mobile-oriented.
Conclusion
Thanks for reading this article on Digital Marketing for Small Businesses. I hope that I have been able to offer you some tips and advice on how to get started with digital marketing for your small business.
As a small business owner, you want to make sure you have the best opportunities for growth. And that’s where digital marketing comes in! With the right strategies, you can easily start digital marketing for small businesses, regardless of your budget or your business size.