These digital marketing tips will help your growing business to establish a strong online presence – but without costing you a penny.
The perceived complexity of new technologies can often put off new business owners from delving into the world of online marketing. The huge array of platforms available makes it hard for relative newbies to this field to determine the right strategy to adopt for their business. However, there are a number of go-to tools and tips that we can offer that don’t take long to get your head around. These should help you focus your time and effort appropriately, growing your business along the way.
Check out these 5 top digital marketing tips:
1. Get your website basics right
Visitors are becoming increasingly demanding in terms of the experience they expect from a website. They want a fast loading website, that serves up the information they require in manageable chunks, as a minimum requirement. As a small business, you may not have the same budget as more established firms, but you can at the very least get the basics right.
- Speed – You can test your website’s mobile speed with Google’s free tool and see how you could decrease bounce rates.
- Search Engine Marketing – It is essential that you get to grips with search engine marketing. This involves the use of high-quality content to make your brand visible on search engines.
First you should design your website in a manner which reflects how you wish to be found on the likes of Google and ensure that there are no barriers to search engines trawling your website. - Create calls to action – Every successful website contains a clear and compelling calls-to-action. These buttons and forms tell the user what the next step in their journey is.
- Monitor analytics – Google Analytics is free and offers invaluable information about visitor behaviours on your website. Keep an eye on bounce rates, time on site, number of pages viewed as a whole, but also monitor these factors on individual landing pages. If people are leaving your site quickly, then something is amiss! Test new page designs and revised copy with a differing message to see how it impacts on these measures in Analytics
2. Blog effectively using ‘long tail’ key terms
It’s essential to keep your website up-to-date to ensure that your product or service is visible online and reaching its targetmarket. But how to ensure that search engines can locate your website and rank it highly remains a mystery to many. This is where blogging can help.
Every day, new content goes online from competitors and other companies operating in a similar field as your own. This has the potential to decrease your business’s visibility, pushing it back down the rankings. To stay on top of the digital marketing game, utilise blogging to your advantage.
Posting content that’s valuable and relevant to your market helps drive traffic to your business’s website and social media pages, but only if it is targeted appropriately.
For smaller businesses, it’s often the case that a website is highly unlikely to rank on the first page of Google for a broad term related to their product/service.
For example
If you organise events, the key term “events” alone would be near impossible to rank well for if you’re just entering the market. It is simply too broad and therefore faces extremely stiff competition. What’s more it is so broad that it is open to multiple interpretations, meaning that event if you were to rank for it, you would no doubt attract unwanted visitors to your site searching for something else entirely. These visitors would then bound back out of your site and google will see a poor user experience.
Use Google’s keyword planner tool to seek out relevant key terms. You’ll need to create a Google Ads account to utilise this extremely valuable tool, but it’s worth the hassle.
3. Build online credibility
Whether you’re a plumber or a business consultant, chances are that potential new clients will look you up online before getting in touch. As such, your online reputation as a small business owner could be the deciding factor when a prospective customer is searching for your product/service.
Customer reviews aren’t anything new, but gathering online reviews is often put on the back burner or overlooked entirely. However 30% of people said reviews were key when judging local businesses so this should be a priority for your digital marketing strategy.
So, you must ensure that you have a strong presence on review sites. Whether it’s TrustaTrader or RatedPeople.com, Trustpilot or Feefo that you deem most appropriate to your business, make sure your site is listed. And once listed, actively monitor and encourage reviews on an ongoing basis and address any negative comments in a timely, open and professional manner.
4. Enhance your digital marketing strategy with the right social media channels
It is estimated that there are currently 2.62 billion people in the world who currently use some form of social media. So, if you don’t have a Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter account for your company, you’re missing out.
Often small business owners ask, which platform should I focus on? The answer is simple…
Focus on the social media platform most relevant to your business and where your customers are most active.
If you deliver a B2B service then LinkedIn and/or Twitter are natural choices. For B2C businesses, Facebook and/or Instagram might be better choices.
Whatever you decide, focus on growing a primary social media channel.
Make the most of free platform functionality
Facebook offers some powerful targeting for it’s online advertising and LinkedIn promotes advanced searching and InMails as part of it’s upgrade packages. However before you jump straight in and pay for either of these services it is important to build a strong presence using the entry level packages available first. Most interesting prospects can be found on LinkedIn with the correct search criteria without the need to upgrade. Equally, establishing a strong local fan presence on Facebook for your business is very possible without investment.
5. Harness the power of video
5 billion youtube videos are watched every day. It is an area that is growing at an incredible rate, and these statistics from HubSpot show why:
- 97% of marketers say video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service
- 76% say it helped them increase sales
- 81% of people have been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video
Therefore, video is a big element in the digital marketing mix, but it doesn’t have to come with a hefty price tag.
Numerous video editing tools are available online and if you want to simply voice an opinion or deliver advice about a particular subject, simply record a video on your phone. Be sure to check the sound quality and lighting before posting anything online of course.
If it’s a more professional product introduction you’re after, then it’s worthwhile trawling sites such as fivver.com as these are brimming with talented freelancers ready to create an animation to promote your product or service for a surprisingly small fee. This is because many animators have built up a bank of stock footage which they can easily repurpose for multiple animations.
Kick start your digital marketing efforts today
The tips above should help you to jump start your digital marketing efforts in a way that is both affordable and easy to get to grips with. Don’t forget that if in doubt, there’ll be a video on youtube that can explain each subject further.
Capitalise on free online tutorials and you’ll soon realise that many aspects of digital marketing aren’t rocket science. The development of new technology that has emerged over recent years has in fact empowered small business owners to captain their own ship when it comes to many digital marketing initiatives.
Of course, if you need any further support or want to take your digital marketing efforts to the next level, then the team here at BeeBrilliant! Marketing are ready to take your call.
Joanna Tracey