As a small business owner, getting started with digital marketing can be confusing. There’s plenty of research about the benefits of online marketing over traditional methods like print marketing, but if you’re just getting to grips with going digital it’s essential to keep things as simple as possible.
The most important thing for SMEs stepping into the world of remote marketing is to plan a strategy that is both cost-effective and will engage and motivate their target customers. Digital marketing can offer high returns on investment, but before you amp up your spending budget, here are three low-cost tips that you can implement straight away.
Power up your Social Media
There’s no getting away from the fact that social media is deeply embedded into our daily lives. Any business that wants to succeed in the market needs to have a relevant and up to date social media presence – it's a vital tool that can be effortlessly leveraged to increase brand awareness and engagement.
While many businesses will use social media to straight-up promote and advertise products or services, it’s actually more beneficial to get a bit more creative with your approach. Just look at Moon Pie’s Twitter account. The brand has consistently used humour throughout its posts to stand-out in followers feeds, many of which have been retweeted a further 10 or 12 thousand times.
Learn to Link-Build
Relevant and targeted link building is an effective digital marketing activity that is even used by large brands and corporations. The global gaming brand PokerStars, for example, incorporates link-building into its digital marketing strategy, with PokerStars bonus code links being placed in iGaming directories and news sites to drive a relevant audience directly to its gaming platform.
As a small business owner, you don’t have to begin with an extensive link-building strategy, however. Even something simple like claiming your business on local directories like Yelp, Yahoo, and Google can get you started with the process. They boost your web presence, making you more visible in relevant searches, and have the power to drive traffic back to your website.
Build Engagement with Emails
Don’t shy away from email marketing; it’s a quick, easy, and surprisingly effective way to help your business grow. Your existing customers are a valuable resource, so engage with them and watch as visits and clicks on your website can be converted to enquiries.
You will need to build a high-quality database of people who will likely appreciate and respond to your email content, but that can easily be done by capturing customer data on your website. Encourage people to sign up for your email newsletter with incentives like special discounts, and add an email registration form onto your site.
In order to ensure you meet international compliance like GDPR, always ensure that all your sign-up forms include “marketing opt-in" features, and only contact those individuals who have expressly given their consent.
A Wealth of Resources
There are, of course, plenty of other things that you can implement into your initial digital marketing strategy, after all, the internet offers a wealth of resources.
Regular blogging, for example, will give your customers fresh new content to engage with and help establish your business as knowledgeable experts in your relevant field.
Don’t try to implement too much into your strategy at once, however. Keep things small, to begin with so you can easily track and measure which methods are the most effective.
By Adam Walker
