A Digital Marketing Survival Guide for Small Businesses
Reaching prospects is one of the biggest challenges faced by small business owners. Even if you offer a high-quality, market-leading product or service, it’s not going to translate into sales unless people know about it. There are ways to reach your small business’s audience, however, including digital marketing.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital Marketing strategies involve the use of email, website, online advertising and other digital channels to promote a business or its products or services. Statistics show that 78 percent of the U.S. population has internet access. Regardless of what your small business sells, your target audience is probably online using digital channels, you can reach them with marketing messages to boost your business’s sales.
Search Engine Optimization
After launching your business’ website, you should consider optimizing it for high visibility in the search results. This method is known as search engine optimization (SEO), it’s one of the most cost-effective ways to promote your business online. As your site climbs the search rankings, it will attract more traffic. And unlike paid advertising services, this traffic is completely free. In the industry, we call this “organic traffic”.
Go Mobile
Mobile is an essential element of an effective small business marketing strategy. As of 2015, more people use smartphones to access the internet than desktop and laptop computers. If your business’ website isn’t compatible for mobile devices, your users may encounter broken elements and other functionality issues which may cause them to leave your site. Adopting a responsive web design, however, ensures that all users can access and use your business’ website effectively, regardless of device. It lives up to its namesake by responding to the device on which it’s viewed. When a responsive website is viewed on a mobile device, the layout changes automatically to create a positive user experience.
Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads offers a near-limitless amount of targeted traffic for small businesses. According to a survey conducted by Pew Research, 68 percent of U.S. adults have a Facebook profile. While you can always reach these users by maintaining a Facebook Page for your business, Facebook Ads provides a jump start by extending your reach past your direct network of followers. This self-serving advertising platform allows you to create and display custom ads that appear in users’ News Feed or the right-side column of Facebook.
Google AdWords
Another self-serving advertising platform to consider using is Google AdWords. Originally launched more than 17 years ago, it’s become one of the most popular digital advertising channels, otherwise known as pay-per-click (PPC). With AdWords, you can create ads for Google Search, Gmail, YouTube and other partner sites. Best of all, you’ll only be charged when someone clicks on your ad.
Video/YouTube
Statistics show that users watch more than 3 billion hours of content on YouTube each month and is now considered the second largest search engine, right after Google. As a small business owner, you should consider incorporating a video marketing campaign in which you create and upload relevant videos to YouTube and other video-sharing sites, and share them through your social media channels. To take it a step further, investing in a YouTube advertising campaign may be beneficial to your business as your videos would be shown to potential customers that have shown interest in your product or service.
At Figment Design, we make it easy for you to incorporate these essential marketing strategies. Contact the digital marketing experts at Figment Design today to schedule a consultation and let us show you how we can make your small business grow.
