Small business marketing used to be simple. Choose a name and logo, print up some business cards and post cards to mail out and place an ad in a newspaper. But, before you long for yesteryear, consider this: today’s digital marketing is far more complex, but it comes with far more opportunity. Your small business with a small budget can reach your exact target market instantly.
What businesses used to spend in dollars to reach their target market, you can today spend on time reaching your target market.
Time and money, of course, are limited for small business owners, so make sure the time and money you invest in digital marketing is well spent.
The problem you’re more likely to face today is not the cost of marketing, it’s figuring out a formula for your digital marketing and conquering the technology to get it done. Making sure you have a strong online presence is a basic element of doing business today. It’s the equivalent of an “OPEN” sign on the door of a storefront. Your job is to find out where your customers spend time online and make sure you’re spending time there with them.
How to get started with digital marketing
Here’s the basics of what every business needs to get started with online marketing.
A functional website
Weekly content updates on your website
Daily social media content
Email marketing
Now, let’s break that down.
Website basics
A functional website means that your website is only 3-4 years old at most. Unless you work in e-commerce, most small business websites can be simple and cost effective. Keeping your site up to date with current digital marketing best practices will not only make your business look professional, but it will also save you time. The older your site is, the harder you will have to work in the backend to get the most out of it.
You’ll also need an SEO (search engine optimization) audit and optimization. This is work you need to do on the backend of your site to make sure that your target market in your area finds you online when they are searching. It’s the technical side of how websites improve their ranking on sites like Google.
Digital marketing content basics
Once you have your website set up, it’s a working asset. You’ll need to regularly post new content to your site so that you drive traffic to your website, stay top of mind for your target marketing and continue to improve your search engine ranking. Content can come in the form of a blog, a podcast or videos. All of them work well, so the choice is yours. It will depend on what is easiest for you and how your audience tends to consume content. For example, if you’re trying to reach young men, videos on YouTube and then embedded on your site might make the most sense. Or if you love giving advice and chatting, a podcast might be really doable for you. What’s important is that you choose your medium and be consistent.
Daily social media content
Social media is the next layer of a robust digital marketing plan because this is how you can promote your content, your website and your brand story. Social media is the public marketplace of today, and like it or not, every seller needs to show up. You don’t have to focus on every channel, but figure out what your audience prefers and make sure you are there joining the conversation. Better yet, create great content to drive the conversation. Posts on each social media channel have a different lifespan and you’ll need to post regularly to stay relevant in that space. We’ll talk about each channel separately here in future blog posts.
Email marketing
What’s that you say? You day email marketing is dead? Think again. Consider these stats from Wordstream:
80% of retail professionals indicate that email marketing is their greatest driver of customer retention
Email is the third most influential source of information for B2B audiences, behind only colleague recommendations and industry-specific thought leaders.
It’s true that no one wants your email newsletter, unless you’re sending out awesome deals and great buys to customers who want it. But there are better ways to do email marketing, and we’ll talk about them in an upcoming blog post.
Be patient
The most important part of your digital marketing plan is to be patient. Your online presence is built brick by brick, and it’s not all or nothing. What’s great about digital marketing is that it’s easy to make changes later on as you adjust your plan or gain more wisdom. Start at the beginning and keep pushing forward. And when you have a question, send it our way. We always write back.
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