Are you a small business and trying out different ways to increase sales? In the current scenario, using the power of the internet can help bring the right customer for your business.
As a small business owner, you must make use of the best digital marketing tips for small businesses for better ROI or conversions. Using these strategies, you can minimize the barriers of entry into the marketplace which is an issue with traditional forms of marketing.
Following are the 11 best digital marketing tips for small businesses:
- Work on LOCAL SEO
- Create Engaging Blog Content
- Research Your Competitors and Stand Out Among Them
- Fix All the Issues Related to Your Website
- Improve Google My Business Listing and Customer Reviews
- Create Appealing Visual Content
- Improve Email Marketing
- Make Use of Google Ads for Your Business
- Focus on a Primary Social Media Channel
- Partner With Local Influencers
- Use Chatbots
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Work on Local SEO
Local SEO is a part of search engine optimization and focuses on improving the visibility of a local business in local search engine results. It receives the highest conversion levels of all local advertising channels and increases your online visibility to neighboring customers.
You can build local links from the following:
- Bloggers
- Sponsorship Websites
- Newspaper Websites
- Awards or Festival Sites
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Create Engaging Blog Content
If your business is competitive, you will have to create an effective content strategy to get maximum results. For smaller businesses, it would be very difficult to rank on the first page of a search engine for a broad term related to their product or service. For example, it would be next to impossible to rank for the keyword phrase “Running Shoes” if you are new to the market.
Targeting this phrase would require a large budget and resources which isn’t feasible for a small business. Also, even if you end up ranking for this broad keyword phrase, it may not lead to more customers. That is why you must focus on creating engaging blog content.
The following tips will help you in running a successful blog:
- Put your audience or readers first.
- Write to cover their pain points and offer effective solutions for the same.
- Use the correct tone of voice.
- Create an SEO-friendly blog.
- Develop trust among your readers.
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Research Your Competitors and Stand Out Among Them
One of the best digital marketing tips for small businesses is to research your competitors as a local business. This will help you create a unique strategy and offer additional value in the market. You can begin with the Google Search feature and check how your competitors are positioning themselves within their ads.
If you are running a business of shoes and wondering how to differentiate your brand from the other companies who are offering similar products? The best way to succeed is to offer something that others don’t.
Following methods of differentiation will help you stand out and target the right customer for your business:
- Service – Installation, training, speed, ease of doing business, etc.
- Product – Gets noted the most but can be easily duplicated or could be short-lived.
- Distribution – Distributors, suppliers, manufacturers, or retailers you work with.
- Reputation or Image – Your current customers form an opinion about your product or service and may become your advocates in the future.
- Price – This parameter can be easily duplicated. But, the customer may not hesitate to pay more if you are offering something unique that adds value.
- Relationship – Customer-employee relationships can help your business stand out among your competitors. You can also add a review service like Trustpilot rating.
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Fix All the Issues Related to Your Website
Online users want a fast and efficient website that will cater to all their needs. Being a beginner in the business domain, you may not have the budget like the big firms, but you can at least ensure that your website has all the basics in place. The idea is to offer a fast-loading webpage with rich content to your audience.
A slow website can severely affect your chances of converting new users into customers. Page load time or page speed is becoming more and more important as the world is using mobile over desktop today and wants immediate results.
Page Speed Insights tool by Google gives you suggestions on how to reduce the loading time of your website. You can test the speed of your site and discover different ways to reduce the bounce rates.
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Improve Google My Business Listing and Customer Reviews
When a potential customer is looking for your product or service, your online reputation as a small business owner can be a deciding factor for him/her. With the help of Google My Business, you can control how the user perceives your business.
Following are the mistakes that you must avoid:
- Using duplicate listings.
- Misusing the business name. E.g. adding unnecessary promotional messages.
- Setting up unnecessary new listings after changing the address.
Customer reviews are an old trend but are still valid for any business. More than 30% of the people said that they checked reviews before choosing a local business for buying a product or service. Make reviews a top priority as a part of your digital marketing strategy.
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Create Appealing Visual Content.
Content is and will always be one of the best digital marketing tips for small businesses, and the content marketing industry has no limits. Your content strategy can make or break your business. Content in the form of video is growing at a rapid rate, and these statistics show that:
- More than 95% of marketers say that video has helped in increasing the understanding of users related to their product or service.
- More than 75% of marketers say that video has helped them in improving sales.
- More than 80% of the users were convinced to buy a product or service by watching the video of a brand.
One more essential statistic is that more than 2 billion users are using Youtube every month. Bigger brands are aware of the power of video marketing and keep creating video campaigns as per the market trends. You might not have a big budget, but you can always team up with a local and good video agency or a freelancing team to get your campaign up and running.
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Improve Email Marketing
Email marketing is another yet important digital marketing strategy for small businesses. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Are you aware of the legal aspects of email marketing?
- Do you know what your competitors are doing?
- Have you chosen a provider?
- Are you capable of crafting an effective email?
If you are struggling to solidify your knowledge of email marketing, you can do an email marketing certification course.
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Make Use of Google Ads for Your Business
Google Ads, earlier known as Google Adwords, is an evolving platform. You will have to follow 8 stages given below:
- Set Goals for your business
- Carry out a detailed research
- Define your budget
- Set your structure
- Select right keywords
- Maintain relevance
- Make use of strong messaging
- Look at the bigger picture
Updated Google Keyword Planner – Selection of the right keywords is one of the important stages of creating a Google Ads Search Campaign. The new interface of Google Keyword Planner will help you do it efficiently.
If you have carried out the keyword research for a campaign of running shoes, you can make use of the following features:
- Volume trends
- Breakdown by platform (device)
- Improved forecasting tools
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Focus on a Primary Social Media Channel
Social media marketing strategies are changing with constant updates and social media channels form one of the best digital marketing tips for small businesses across all the platforms. Being a small business, you might be wondering which platform to pick for marketing? You should focus on a platform that is relevant to your business and where your potential customers are most active.
If you are offering a product or service in the B2B domain, then you should opt for Twitter or LinkedIn for marketing. If you are a B2C business, you should use Instagram or Facebook for gaining leads. Pick a primary social media channel to focus on. Being a small business owner, you probably won’t have the required resources or capital to run or manage two channels effectively.
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Partner With Local Influencers
You can collaborate with local influencers to create good and share-worthy content for your clients. More and more upcoming businesses are using this area of digital marketing and growing their business at a faster rate. Influencer marketing is not only limited to the food industry. You may run a food business and use an influencer outreach strategy to help raise awareness of your product or service by contacting the local food bloggers.
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Use Chatbots
Chatbots have become a norm for online retailers and are at a forefront of innovation for all small and upcoming businesses. It is essential to create your bot for running your website. Facebook offers a convenient method to create one with less coding.
There are more than 3 lakh FB chatbots live today making it the most popular platform for chatbot use. Research proved that more than 70% of users prefer chats for quick and straightforward communication.
Summing Up
If you are a beginner, these 11 Best Digital Marketing Tips for Small Businesses will help target the potential customer for your business and will ensure maximum returns. You can even try hiring a reputed digital marketing agency for your brand. Make sure you try all the possible permutations and combinations and choose the best strategy for the success of your business.
