Digital marketing tips for small business
Having your own small business can be fulfilling and profitable but at times it can also be overwhelming. The responsibility of marketing your business and building your brand starts and ends with you.
Every small business needs to implement a strategy to help get more customers and sell more products or services. For just about everyone, the best way to do this includes digital marketing.
Digital marketing is one of the most effective, yet affordable, ways to grow your customer base.
If done well, your small business will be able to increase brand awareness, drive sales, and compete with bigger businesses who have more marketing budget available than you. But if you’re not sure where to start, here are three digital marketing ideas you should be using right now.
- Website
- Social media
- Blogs
Website
Your website is the front door to your business, so if you don’t already have one, or have one that doesn’t reflect how amazing your business is, this is the most important business asset you must get. You don’t have to spend a huge amount of money to create a good website. You can use simple apps like Square Space or Shopify or we can create a website for you that is optimised to create sales and build brand.
Make sure your website is easy to navigate and reflects your business’s style and brand personality.
It’s useful to include reviews from your current customers so that potential customers know they can trust you and your products and services. Better yet, get your own Google My Business listing and ask your customers to review you.
Help even more people find your website with Google Ads. These can be a little tricky to set up to get the most from your budget but Southside Marketing is always happy to help, either with some free advice or by producing effective ads for you.
Social Media
The key to success on social media is to make sure you’re active on the social media platforms best suited to your business.
Determine which platforms your customers are most active on. If your target audience is skewed mostly towards men, then Pinterest probably wouldn’t be ideal. If your products or services are suited to a 50-year-old demographic, then Snapchat is probably a waste of time.
Before you sign up to any social media accounts, make sure you do the relevant research so that you can use your time and resources as efficiently as possible.
Complement your Facebook and Instagram social media posts with paid advertising. These give you a much larger reach and can be tightly targeted to reach the right people without costing the earth. Southside Marketing can help you set these up or provide one on one tuition to teach you how to do this yourself.
Blogs
Don’t underestimate the power of maintaining a blog for your small business. While whipping up regular blog posts might take time and commitment, it can boost your business in a few different ways.
Creating well-written, useful content shows your customers that you are knowledgeable in your field.
Regular blog posts that include relevant SEO keywords also help to improve your search rankings, making it easier for customers to find you. Google looks favourably on websites that are always being updated with fresh, new content (as opposed to static websites).
A good website, blogs and social media are three effective digital marketing strategies that will help your small business grow. If done correctly they can all help you achieve impressive results without blowing your marketing budget.