Welcome, you are here as you have a notion that DIGITAL MARKETING CAN CHANGE your small business more effectively…right? But you don’t know how to use it.
Yeah, there are many who spent on digital marketing and had fruitless stories. Maybe you are also one of them. Do you have fruitless stories as digital marketing is not strong or you don’t know how to use it for your small business? There are also stories of people who tasted the benefit of this fruit…maybe in your neighborhood itself. So, what made you lost and he won on the same track. Here comes the importance of strategizing your digital marketing approach.
So here are the 7 pillars upon which you can lead digital marketing approach for your small business:
Lead upon strategy rather than leaving behind luck
More leads or more walk-ins are the basic things that you look forward to thrive your small business. If you want to achieve this, you should be recognizable among your ideal customers. Attain recognition not by relying on luck, instead create a core message and strategy of difference.
For developing a perfect strategy, focus on the following areas:
- Identify your ideal customers and know what makes them converts,
- Define the characteristics of your ideal customers,
- Interact with your current customers to find out their expectations,
- Check out your reviews to know what your customers talk about your business, and
- Define your positioning and unique selling point (USP) that solves the problems faced by your ideal customers.
The above-said strategy not only represents your digital marketing strategy instead it is the basic thing that you should follow for your small business.
Website: To drag visitor’s sight on you
Having a user friendly website which defines who you are, what you offer, where you are, help in converting visitors to customers. Website pops up and up every day as it is a must service even if you provide small business services.
While building your website, try to ensure
- A simple, sensible Web address,
Adopt a web address that can be easily typed into a web browser or an email address. Don’t make things complicated. - Home Page with a strong and clear message,
Make a simple way to the visitors to understand about what you provide them with. - Active Calls to Action,
You can motivate your visitors to take real steps towards becoming your ideal customers. Today calls to action aren’t just for business purpose – customers need and expect them. Needs include “Call Now”, “Buy Now” or “Sign up”. - Contact information, including a phone number and physical location,
Showing physical address and contact details comfort your customer with the credibility of your business. It is advisable to include contact information in every page of the website in the footer or side bar or even in top right corner, which helps the visitors to find it more easily. - Customer testimonials,
People love to hear experiences of people who had already availed your services. If you are new and small in this field, there may be a trust issue surrounding you. Customer testimonial is a way to create trust in you especially among potential customers. - Familiarize SEO, and
Your hard work comes into effect only if your website is visible to your potential customers digitally. Familiarizing more with SEO you can get up into the first pages of search engines. Optimizing the keywords, having many links, naming page titles and URLs correctly and tagging images and videos can get you there. - Design and style must be user friendly.
A website should be crisp, clean and easy to navigate. The website structure should be straightforward and arranged logically. Your website should be compatible with a range of web browsers and different screen sizes. Responsive websites are a must.
Be noticeable in searches by mastering SEO
There are a large number of businesses of your kind, within your neighborhood. Following traditional marketing is not a good option now days. All prospective entrepreneurs should ensure their presence in the digital space. Now the world is not ready to look into those billboards hanging around while they are provided with custom searches. So why go behind?
SEO is not that complicated, but it must be done in a strategic manner, integrated with your content and website structure.
To be noticeable in searches
- Optimize your website for visitors and search engine,
- Drive customer engagement through Google My Business,
- Ensure your data is correct and complete across directories,
- Get your business listed in local directories, and
- Adopt right keywords which can boost your website traffic.
Get reviews lead your visitors to customers
It is quite natural that people like to hear from others. Such opinions cannot be replaced by your comments about your business. A good review can be turned mere visitors into active customers. So by getting more reviews and more good reviews in online platforms like Google, Zomato and Yelp could put your business ahead. There are platforms like Little Black Book focusing on localities which emphasizes ‘what’s new & interesting’. So make sure your presence in them which introduces small businesses.
Engage with your customers for good reviews by,
- Optimizing your profile on review sites,
- Making every new customers to review your service/products,
- Responding to each reviews so that the customer can feel you care for them, and
- Highlighting the best reviews on your website.
Get your customers engaged through social media
There is a false notion that social media marketing is mainly aiming at big companies but it is vice-versa. This is due to the reason that small business are more community based, individually focused and provides personalized attention. A study conducted by Social Media Examiner in the year 2016 reveals that 90% of marketers is keen to know about the most effective social tactics and the best
ways to engage their audience with social media.
To build a name to a firm is okay and achievable. But the key to success lies in building a brand name. For building brand awareness follow a schedule which is simple. This schedule should cover up the plan to increase your customer base, and connect with current customers.
To efficiently engage customers on social media,
- Setup profiles on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter,
- Create a plan to reach your ideal customers through the right platforms,
- Create engagement by capturing personal brand moments, and
- Strategize your content, sharing and paid social efforts.
Spot your customers in online advertising
Lets discuss an example .You are a new face in the cake shop marketing in Bangalore. You decide to have a keyword from paid services where you can excel in the online searches. You chose the keyword as “best cakes”. But here comes the suggestion, if you are a cake seller only focusing in Bangalore then why you go for all other geographic location searches which are miles away. Don’t believe that your name just go circulating where you cannot make your services. Next, people of this era don’t usually search for best cakes instead they would prefer the right type of cakes of their choice. So here comes the issue of choosing right ways of marketing instead of spending an amount in vain.
- Develop a list of valuable, long-tail, less-competitive, low-cost and highly relevant keywords for your campaigns,
- Based on your ideal customer, create the characteristics of targeted audience,
- Build landing pages which are campaign specific for high conversions,
- Create a relevant and powerful Call-to-Action,
- Create ads and campaigns focused on your budget, and
- Develop key metrics based on campaign objectives and conversions.
Analyze data to know what’s working and what’s not
Analyze business situations by interpreting data and don’t rely on mere assumptions. Data lays a strong foundation upon which you can build and rebuild. New businesses are a practical trial from which you create data and rely upon them to rebuild into profit. Data shows the customers need, changing lifestyles and also the problem they face. Data is not only a way to success but also lead us to stay alive in market. Market is changing day by day. If you are equipped with datas you can easily adapt to changing situations and be a winner.
To interpret and analyze the data
- Use free business analytics solutions like Google Analytics to get better insights,
- Use these dashboards to monitor both historical and live progress,
- Define conversion goals specific to marketing campaigns, and
- Understand from where your best leads come from and their behavior.
Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.- Michael Porter
Adaptability is the underlying factor which enables human race to go on. Adaptability in your business also makes you sustainable. To make you adaptable with this era you need to engage with your customers and drag the viewers to your customers. For this strategy of spotting right ones should be emphasized. These above listed proven techniques are the answers to strategize digital marketing approach in small business sector.
