Digital Marketing Tips to Get You Up and Running
No matter how small your business, it’s never too early to get digital marketing working on your behalf. You may think that the most important thing is to focus on sales, but without a regular steam of qualified leads flowing into the business, you’ll find it a struggle. One of the barriers to action for small businesses can be knowing which types of digital marketing to start off with. In this article, we suggest where to make a start, and what to prioritise.
Types of Digital Marketing to Focus On
Imagefix is a digital marketing agency that works with a range of businesses from small start-ups to large organisations. The types of digital marketing that we recommend are tailored to the business goals of the client we’re working with. For small businesses, we would suggest the following:
- Conversations With Customers
- Competitor Research
- An Optimised Website
- Google Business Profile
- Ongoing Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- Work With Local SEO
- Develop Your Primary Social Media Channel
- Use Email to Market Your Business
1. Conversation With Customers
There’s plenty of businesses that jump into developing types of digital marketing based on nothing more substantial than guesswork. We always recommend that clients schedule in some chats with current or potential customers before they started to spend their marketing budget. Even if you think you know your customers, you may come away with some unexpected insights.
Try out the following questions:
- What do you need our product or service to do (find out the problem it solves)?.
- When would you be likely to buy it?
- What kind of information would be useful before you made your decision to purchase?
- What features are the most important to you?
- Where do you search for products online?
2. Competitor Research
If you’re selling locally, you’ll want to know what the competition is offering, and what your business can offer that’s different or better. Put yourselves in the shoes of someone searching online for your product and carry out a Google Search. This gives you a clear overview of what you’re up against. Try to spot what’s missing, from a customer perspective. If you find something, that’s your differentiator that will make you stand out.
Examples of Differentiation:
- Product – Is there a product that’s unique to your business?
- Service – Can you deliver quicker, to a particular area, for free?
- Brands – What’s special about the brands you sell?
- Image – Do you do business differently? Perhaps you donate to a local charity, have a loyalty scheme, run competitions?
- Reviews – Demonstrate how much your customers appreciate you. Add a review service for ongoing updates.
- Price – Price wars can get out of hand, but is there anyway you could add extra value in return for the price asked?
3. An Optimised Website
Whether you have an existing website, or you’re looking for a new website design, you need it to be search engine optimised. SEO is the practice of optimising a website or online content to improve its visibility and ranking on search engines like Google.
You want your site to appear as near to the top of the Google search rankings as possible when someone searches for a particular word or phrase connected with your product. This is important because the higher up you appear in search results, the more people will click on it and visit your website.
SEO involves various techniques such as using relevant keywords in your content, making sure your website is mobile-friendly, improving website speed and user experience, building quality backlinks from other websites, and ensuring your website is properly structured for search engines to understand and index your content.
By implementing these techniques, you can improve your website’s visibility and attract more organic traffic from search engines. You will also improve the experience for visitors to your site.
4. Google Business Profile
Your Google Business Profile is free, and it allows businesses to create an online presence for their company. It’s a listing that appears on Google search and maps results and provides important online information about the business such as its name, address, phone number, website, hours of operation, product details and reviews.
Businesses with a Google Profile can manage their information and engage with customers by responding to reviews, posting updates and images, and creating offers or events. It’s a great way to start appearing in search results and attracting more people to your site.
5. Ongoing Search Engine Optimisation
A website isn’t ‘done’ once its launched; ideally it will continue to grow and evolve in response to customers. Your content will drive this evolution, so you need to develop a strategy that will engage visitors, remind people that you’re part of the neighbourhood, and give people a reason to visit your site regularly, and recommend it to others.
Use a blog to talk about your product, your relationship to the community, and your pride in serving your local neighbourhood. Tell people what it is you do, who the members of your team are, and what role they play in delivering great service to customers.
6. Work With Local SEO
Also known as geographical SEO, this is a branch of search optimisation which focuses on driving local traffic from mobile searches to your business. 98% of searchers check out local businesses online, 76% read reviews before using them, and 42% find local businesses by clicking on the Google Map Pack.
Local SEO uses keywords like ‘trainers in Chorley’, or ‘plumber near me’. The Google algorithm looks for a range of geographical signals when ranking for local SEO; your business location needs to be in your Google Profile, on social media, throughout your website, and in reviews.
7. Develop Your Primary Social Media Channel
Of all the types of digital marketing available, social media tends to be the one people think of first. Find out, when you’re chatting to customers, which social media platform they use. It’s worth knowing where your customers are before sinking time and energy in developing the channel.
Social media is free, but social media management is time intensive, so it’s best to start out with just one channel, and then develop a second when you’re ready. If you’re a B2B business, LinkedIn is likely to be your best choice. For B2C businesses, check out Facebook, TikTok and Instagram.
Need Some Help With Digital Marketing
Choosing the types of digital marketing that are right for your business is one thing, implementing them well and consistently is another. Most small businesses work alongside a digital marketing agency as they create all the components that will make up their digital marketing strategy.
At Imagefix we can provide web design, search engine optimisation, social media management and local SEO. We start out by talking to clients about the goals they need to achieve, and then – through discussion – we’ll come up with an affordable package that gets the job done.
We may not do everything all in one go, but the idea is to generate profit, which will fund the next stage of digital development.
Would you like to speak to someone from the Imagefix team about the types of digital marketing that would be right for your business? Call us today on 01525 715608
