9th July 2021
Understanding digital marketing can be confusing for many small business owners. But the reality is that having a digital marketing plan can be one of most effective ways for you to attract new customers and grow your business.
You only have to look around you to understand why. The internet has fundamentally changed the way that we connect, research, share information and buy things. And digital marketing has forever changed the way that businesses promote their products and services. It’s no longer enough to just have a website and hope that ‘if you build it, they will come’ – you also need strategies to drive potential customers to your website and that’s the primary role of digital marketing.
Don’t know where to start? Here we outline the basics of digital marketing to help you understand how it can help you grow your business.
Digital marketing (also called online marketing) refers to marketing activities that use online search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Bing) and electronic devices (such as smart phones and computers) to promote your business, products and services. These activities generally include:
One of the most common questions that small business owners ask when it comes to digital marketing is ‘what channel best suits my business? The short answer is that there is no one-size-fits all approach when it comes to digital marketing (or any marketing strategy for that matter), but there are some steps you can take to understand what might be best for your business. Chances are, like most things in business, it will take a bit of trial and error to get it the right for your business.
To summarise the unique benefits of SEO, SEM and social media marketing for small business:
In terms of attracting new customers, SEO could be more cost-effective if you are focusing on conversions for long-term success. The combination of local SEO and SEM can help to generate leads and make sales faster. And social media campaigns help to spread the word about your business and drive traffic to your website to increase conversions further.
The best results are usually achieved using a combination of SEO, SEM and social media and diversifying your activity across different platforms, giving you a greater chance of success – as long as you don’t spread your efforts and budget too thin.
The first step you need to take in working out how to market your business is doing your research as it will give you an understanding of who your target audience is, what motivates them and how to promote your products and services to them.
One of the benefits of digital marketing over offline marketing approaches (such as print advertising) is that you can more effectively target audiences by demographic factors (like age, gender and geographic location) as well as personal interests and hobbies (e.g. the brands and topics you ‘like’ on social media platforms).
Tip: If you understand what problems solve for your potential customers, you’ll get a head start when it comes to targeting them with keywords and search terms as part of optimising your website and developing your content plan.
Before you rush into creating content and signing up for a Google Adwords campaign, make sure that you have a strategy in place that ties into your overarching business goals and marketing strategy. It’s important that you consider what is the primary purpose of your digital marketing strategy? For example, is it to:
Having a website is important, but it’s not enough to guarantee your customers will find you. Optimising your website to improve your SEO can be quite technical, so it does pay to engage the services of a digital marketing specialist to help you build and tweak your website. But there are also simple things you can do to optimise your website including:
Google and other search engines will ignore your website if you do too. Your website should be regularly updated with new content (such as a news or blog page) to help your SEO and also reassure your customers that you are open for business. Your website also works as a ‘home’ for your SEM and social media campaigns to drive to.
Make sure you have a plan and structure for your content that takes into consideration:
Tip: Consider including video content – video is the fastest growing type of content and statistics indicate that consumers prefer it, and it delivers ROI. The videos don’t need to be high-budget productions – with a little editing know-how you can learn how to make simple, effective videos from your smartphone.
When you’re investing time and money in digital marketing, you want to make sure you’re getting the best possible returns. Improving your SEO is a long-term strategy and it may take six months to a year before you get results.
Adding Google Analytics to your website will help you track where your website traffic is coming from helping you to determine the relative success of your SEO, SEM and social media activities.
And finally, remember that your digital marketing strategy should be considered within the context of your overarching business goals and marketing strategy, not in isolation.
Resources:
The Australian Government’s business.gov.au website contains useful information for small business owners including a guide to social media for business.
Contact us to find out more about how BOQ Business can support your small business
