Regardless of the size of your business, you need to think about how digital marketing can grow your business. Just as physical signs can effectively advertise your business, digital marketing can help draw in new customers and increase your revenues from your website. If you’re not familiar with the tools available, your business might not have an effective online presence.
To help your business, we’ve created a guide to leveraging online tools for digital marketing. Small business digital marketing strategies are going to be different than digital marketing strategies for large corporations, but there are foundational tips and tools that every business should use.
Here’s what you should know about leveraging online tools for digital marketing.
Email Marketing
Email is one of the most effective marketing tools that you can use as a business. Whether you use email marketing to alert your readers about new content on your site, or directly email offers and discounts on your products and services, fostering an email list should be at the top of your priority list.
It’s one thing to collect email addresses through a sign-up form on your website, it’s another to create valuable content that keeps your subscribers reading your emails and coming back to your website. Content should be relevant, engaging, and valuable.
If you’re creating content that your readers can find elsewhere, why would they continue to come back to your site?
HubSpot Marketing, MailChimp, and MailJet are just a few of the top free email marketing tools that you can use for your own site. With a simple signup form on your home page, you can capture emails and begin to build your list with these free tools.
Social Media
Just as important as email marketing is your business’ social media presence. Without a dedicated marketing team, it can be difficult to find the time to focus on your social media presence when you have a business to run. While it may not be realistic to use every form of social media when you’re just starting out as a small business, choosing one or two platforms can do wonders for your customer engagement.
Social media allows you to directly engage with your customers through comments, forums, and even live chat options. When you post your original content on social media, new and existing will have the opportunity to interact directly with your business, allowing your business to foster meaningful relationships with those customers.
Social media is used by millions of people every day, and by linking back to your business website from your social media page, you’ll direct more traffic to your site and potentially generate more sales.
You can also set up paid advertisements on various social media sites. Facebook and Instagram have strong ad networks that work just like Google Ads. The most common type of paid advertisement is pay-per-click, meaning you pay every time someone clicks on your advertisement.
Your Website
Your business website should be seen as an extension of your brick and mortar operations. The same attention and care should be put into your website that’s put into your retail space.
In today’s digital world, a lot of business happens completely online. Many businesses are shifting to a completely online business model, so it’s more important than ever to establish a strong online presence through your website.
Small businesses can often get by with a self-built website. WordPress is the most common platform for building a website, and while it isn’t the most beginner-friendly platform, it can allow you to build a professional website with thousands of free, pre-built templates.
There are a few ways to generate traffic to your website, which in turn leads to business growth. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a powerful tool that can generate organic traffic to your site. SEO involves creating high-quality content, web pages, and back-end coding that ranks your website higher on popular search engines, including Google.
By regularly publishing content and targeting keywords and phrases, search engines can index and analyze your website and rank your website higher. The higher your website ranks, the higher the chances of increased traffic.
Another option for generating traffic is through paid advertisements. Google has one of the largest advertisement networks in the world, allowing your advertisements to reach potentially millions of users around the world. While pay-per-click advertisements can be expensive depending on which keyword you’re advertising for, they can also be one of the fastest ways to increase your website’s traffic.
Desktop vs. Mobile Devices
When creating a digital marketing strategy, it’s important to consider the differences between desktop and mobile devices. More and more users are abandoning desktops to solely browse on mobile devices. Mobile devices have much smaller screens, meaning you have to consider what content will be seen first when someone views it online.
What might look fine on a desktop site might end up looking cluttered on a mobile device. When building your website, you’ll have the option to view your site as if you were on a mobile device, which makes it easier than ever to ensure a seamless, consistent experience for all of your customers regardless of what device they’re using.
Creating that consistent experience means bringing your physical store presence to the online world. If your website and social media presence don’t align with your brick and mortar presence, you’ll often have a hard time growing your business on both fronts.
The Importance of Marketing
As any business owner knows, marketing is a vital part of business growth. Prior to the days of Facebook and Google Ads, businesses used creative tactics for attracting new customers. From neon signs to high-end printed banners, using brick and mortar marketing as well as digital marketing is the best way to help your business succeed.
The tools we mentioned here are just a few of the countless tools that your business can use to improve its digital marketing efforts. Have experience in digital marketing – let us know about some of your favorite tools in the comments below!